A Quick Tour of Europe - Part 1

I would like to make a record of things that happened throughout the year, and this is one of it.

One of the highlights of this year was when I received word that I was to be sent to London to attend a seminar on automated terminal, with my colleague. I was skeptical at first, but then the ball started rolling. The first arrangement was to have us flown there for the 2 day seminar, arriving the day before the seminar, and fly back the day after. It's a testament of our HR's "efficiency" in doing this arrangment. I'm not going to say much, but I just wonder if they realized that the seminar is overseas and it takes 12 hours flight just to reach London? You do the math...

Anyways, after much "discussion", pleading in some areas, we managed to "extend" our stay over there. And after much persuasion, we even managed to get ourselves an arrangement to visit one of the automated port in Europe, i.e. Rotterdam. On top of that, our esteemed CEO gave the go word for us to bring our spouses (yeay!)...and since we're going in July, it became a sort of "celebration" of our wedding anniversary for Azz and me.

It wasn't a long trip, we didn't manage to extend it any further. We were scheduled to leave on the 30th June, and come back on 8th of July. The seminar is on the 1st of July, HR wanted us to arrive there the day before, so it left us without any time for a rest before the seminar.

In London, while both Sase and I were stucked in the seminar, Azz brought Sase's wife, Deepa around the city. I guessed they had more fun than we ever did. Hahaha... One thing good about summer, though, the day is longer. So even after we finished the seminar at 5pm, we managed to take a walk around the city until late at night. There was enough light until about 9pm, so we felt safe to walk around for a little bit of sightseeing in the city.

One of the exciting moments for me was being able to go on board the London Eye, which was completed after I left the U.K. (I completed my studies in 1998, and the Eye was officially opened to public in year 2000) It was fun to see the City of London all the way up high, it's 135 metres (443ft), which is high enough to almost see as far as your eyes can. It's much better than our own Eye on Malaysia actually, much better. Anyways, it brought back memories for Azz and I, and that memories came rushing back on why we loved the city so much. Even though it has been 10 years since I last been to the city, I felt that it hasn't changed much, and trying to find our way around the city wasn't that tough.

I hope and pray that I can have more trips like this in the near future. Anyways, I'll post more on our short trip to Europe later.

Mensa Hunt 2008

It's been awhile since I've updated the blog...been busy, so here we go:

It was the Mensa Hunt. C'mon people: MENSA ok? The organization for those smart people and we saw the previous hunt questions. Read the chosen word: SAW. We didn't even try to solve it because we got stuck with the first few questions and just gasped: Oh sh*t...Hahaha...We were apprehensive about joining this hunt because of that. But since it was by Lawrence Hie, and because I got hooked on his type of questions since the BB Hunt, we just had to give it a try. The theme of the hunt was Planet Green, and it's all about the environment. Even the route wasn't that far away, just around the Kota Damansara area. Less travel, less fuel consumption and pollution - good for environment as they say.

As usual, as usual...we had the Macam2 Adaaa moment - we had bumpy starts on other treasure hunts, and this was no different. We're just blank on the first few questions, and just drove off without writing down the answers. I think the first question we were confident of answering was Q4. And that got the ball rolling and it was a breeze from that on, except for a few questions. It was a breeze for us, and that was surprising. We had thought that it was going to be harder than other hunts, but the difficulty was on par as the rest of the hunts. Except for the occasional red herrings. Lawrence is famous for these red herrings, but we were prepared for it. We either figured out the red herrings, or missed out on it completely and got the right answer! Hahahaha....

We had a lot of time to solve the treasure questions because of this. Okay, the solving part was the easy task. Seriously, we had the answers ready by the time we got to the shop to buy the items. But finding that 1 final item was tough. Yes, you guessed it: Phillips Genie 14W Warm Light bulb. OMG...I have no idea how many stops we did before we actually found the bulb. Everywhere we looked and asked the answer was the same: "sold out". We thought to ourselves: there isn't that many team in this hunt, about 40 cars/teams. It's not possible that it sold out on that very day, could it? We had a very patient Farid running around in Ikano (where we were sure he's gonna find it), but it was not to be. So off we went to the smaller shops around Kota Damansara, and after dropping off Farid at one of the shops, we stopped by a small shop displaying a sign proclaiming it to be a wholesaler of everything about bulb. As I got out from the car, we all thought the same thing: If this shop does not have the bulb, all hell will break loose! hahahaha....

As I entered the door I saw the guy sitting peacefully at his desk. A good sign I suppose, and I ask him if he sells Phillips bulb. "Yes sir, we do...here they are..." and with a sweep of his hand he showed me a rack full of Phillips bulb just waiting for me to buy them. And I went blank. OMG, what was the answer again? Hahahahahaha....

All in, it was a relaxing hunt, we finished 14th out of 40plus car. Which is not bad, considering we got 5 wrong question and only tembak the puzzle question. My mistake, I didn't give the rest enough time to crack the puzzle. We're happy that we managed to answer all the treasure questions correctly. I made sure that I wrote every little detail down on the answer sheet, just to be sure. It paid off.

On to the next hunt!

Chronicles of Shaggy...Part II

Just an update on si kenit…went to see the vet on Sunday and found out that he has worms festing in his big belly. So the vet gave him antibiotics (?) I think, and vaccine. He has to go and have his shots again in a month’s time, and a regular visit every 3 months. Other than that he’s in perfect health.

I’m also happy to say that I’ve been right to call Shaggy a “he”, as the vet confirmed his gender. Hehe…I asked the vet whether he can ascertain Shaggy’s gender, and he asked “what do you think?” So I said I thought lil dude must be a “he”. The pet shop guy said that it’s gonna be a bit difficult to tell because Shaggy’s still small. The vet checked Shaggy’s err...private parts, and said “Yes, a he…no wait, a she…..” As I was about to say: alamak, I was wrong….he said “hang on, yes…definitely: a HE….”

Yeay, for lil dude!

Westports: Sun Rise

Westports: Sun Rise, originally uploaded by W.K.Azlan.

This is one of my very first shots of a sun rise. I didn't actually know what sort of settings to use, and just relied on the shutter and aperture settings which will give me the exposure I wanted. This is the classic example of being at the right time and right place. The weather was "kind" to me: it had rained for the last 8 hours and the black clouds were just starting to clear up. The sun had just made it's entrance and I just had discovered that I can actually go up to the roof of my office to practice my shots.

It was a wonderful shot, and the only adjustment I did was to add a little bit of fill light (I have no idea how to edit, by the way) and left it at that. Hopefully, I can get more beautiful shots like these, as I get better at photography and since I have limited places that I can go to practice, expect more of these views in the future... :-)

Chronicles of Shaggy...

The lil dude, or as I like to call it nowadays: si kenit is growing up...One thing we notice is that his appetite is increasing and he seem to like his mother's food more than his own. On top of that he still drinks his mother's milk. No wonder his belly is growing at a faster rate than the rest of his body. Hahaha...

We've let him roam around inside the house most of the time, seldom putting him in the cage, as he already knows where to do his...er..."business"...The mother comes by to lepak with him everyday now. So at least he has company when we're not around. If we are, we usually let him out...since he can run quite fast nowadays and darts for the front door if ever we open it. And one of the most cutest thing we notice nowadays is that he's starting to be a lot more playful, which fascinates my wife all the time.

Enjoy the pix...

Top Gear Malaysia Treasure Hunt 2008

The start

It was the first time for Top Gear Malaysia magazine organizing a treasure hunt. In total there were 49 teams that participated in the hunt. I heard that they actually had to cut some of the teams off due to limited place. Our competition number was 34, so I think we got in at just the right time... :-) The start-off point was at the Regalia Business Park, USJ...and we didn't have to get up that early to reach the place. The briefing was...er...brief, because we all went into action from the get go.

The first challenge was to get us through to the sectors, remember - this is a long distance treasure hunt, time is of the essence. That took us through the North-South highway, and we used the time to scan through the questions as well as figure out the treasure answers. It was funny inside the car because we all came out with all sort of answers without knowing whether we could actually find the correct answers or not. The Ipoh section wasn't that bad actually, although we did have the usual Macam-Macam Adaaaa moment, we usually stumbled at the start of the questions. Once we did a turnaround and started again, that's when we finally saw the answers to the first 3 questions, and off we went to the other sections. It was a nervy start for us as usual...

The missing girls

Okay, here's where we debated on why we performed the way we did after the hunt ended. In this section of questions, we knew what to target for the answers...one of the the questions was "Sounds like the Hips don't lie girl"...easy, right? we should be looking for Shakira, or Sakira or Shadira at the very least...No such luck. We went up and down the street...got out of the car...went up and down again, but there were no answers. We took a look again at the question, and it should be a straight forward question. But we didn't find the signboard anywhere. After we wasted time looking for it again and again, upset as we were, we decided to move on to the next section. Everything went well until another answer we couldn't find. Easy question: "Hamilton's race on a following" and something about feet. Find something with and F & I or F & 1 in the signboard, plus look for maybe a shoe shop. Easy right? Nope. Didn't see it from the car. There was only a few shops there and the only one with F & I was Nafisa; which was a ridiculous answer if we were to take it. Beside Nafisa was a shop displaying a banner "Kedai Kasut, Jualan Penutupan" or something...We suspected that this might be the shop they meant, with the banner covering the actual signboard. So off we went to cross the road and have a closer look. And inside the shop, there was a small sign displaying "Fiona...Shoe Accessories" or something...Ala...senang je, but if you can't see it, you can't answer it lor...

Anyways, we got that one right...I think the other teams also saw it when they went closer, so there were no complaints. But the "Shakira" answer they gave free points, because the signboard came down before the hunt started. Should've at least told us that, would've saved us precious time. Which is the debate in our team, which was time management...if we knew that the signboard didn't exist we would've went straight on to the other questions and saved us some time.

The time, the time...!

Time management...that's important in hunting. Especially in this type of long distance hunting. Because you have to take into account the travelling time in between sectors. By the time we got to the final sectors, I think we were pressed for time, and just went through all the questions without even stopping to discuss it. It helps actually when the questions were a bit easier towards the end. It didn't help that we rushed to write down the answers and left out a few details in the answers which caused us points. Oh dear...

When we got to the finish station, there were several teams already there, and I believe we were penalized 1 point for being 7-8 minutes late? But that's not the end of the hunt, because there was a final task to be done - which was Challenge 2, and it all had to do with the November issue of the Top Gear Malaysia magazine - which was one of the treasure items the teams are supposed to submit. I think we did okay to answer 5 questions (?) in 4 minutes although we did have our usual nervy moment - "it says here page 12, turn to page 12...!why aren't you turning to page 12??!...err, it is page 12..." haha...

In the end, we finished 12th overall, winning the four of us a "fragrance" each from Ferrari (this year dapat bau kereta, next year menang kereta pulak lah...haha)...in retrospect, I think we could've done much much better. If not for some errors in writing down the answers, we would've scored more points. On why we had errors in writing down the answers is simple: time management. That's important, and if we improve on that I think we can start winning some serious stuff...hahaha, how I wish...

The place where we slept...

Paradise Sandy Beach Resort...sounds grand eh? A lot of potential, but could've done much much better. The minus point on Farid & DQ's part was that their room wasn't ready by the time we checked in. And the fact is the check-in time was 3pm, and we arrived at the hotel around 6pm. That's 3 hours for them to prepare the rooms, and they must have known the teams are coming in that day to check in. And the lifts? It took forever to arrive! And there were 3 working lifts! Okay, okay...Enough with the negative points, the positives are...The room was actually fine for a one night stay. The food was okay, the beach was nice although we didn't have time to appreciate it fully. The pool was small but nice enough for us to enjoy about an hour of swimming.

Overall, I think the hunt went well for all of us. Of course the organizers (Time-Out Solutions) are old hands at this, so it is expected that it went quite smooth. Out of all the treasure hunts' C.O.C, I enjoyed their hunts the most. Challenging questions, even more challenging treasure questions and the way they handled the answers and results sessions were always enjoyable, and funny too.

Looking forward to the next treasure hunts!

That Hunting Weekend - Part 2

The Sun Hunt 2008

This is the biggest event of the year for the treasure hunters. Simply because the prizes are bigger, and the competition is tougher. And I do mean big, they have 255 teams competiting in the open category, and I think this time around there's an even bigger number of Masters team competiting in their category - 20 teams overall. The prizes for the open category goes up to 145th placing, so there's hope for all of us. And for those who didn't win any prizes in the competition, there's the lucky draw event to pin of more hopes of winning prizes.

The beginning...

I'm used to waking up early for work, but for treasure hunts...Sun Hunt has usually the earliest start of all hunts. I did tell my wife that the problem with us in the Sun Hunt is our brain is not awake yet by the time the hunt starts and that is why we have problems answering questions at the beginning....hahahaha...This time around it was the Sime Darby Convention Centre which was chosen as the venue for the start and finish; i.e. pre-hunt briefing, final briefing, starting line, finishing line, and dinner/result event. I think it was the best choice of all the other Sun Hunt that we went to, the place is huge, ample parking for all, and the halls even better.

As usual, we struggled at the beginning of the hunt. They wanted to "disperse" all the teams, since there was a large number of us and so they directed us to Kota Damansara (oh dear...). There's 6 sectors out of a possible of 8, and to find the sector you have to "crack"/find the logo from the picture given. Man, the area was jam-packed within the first hour that we were there. It was compaunded by the fact that people were coming into the area to have their usually Sunday morning breakfast. I pity the people there who stumbled upon us that morning. Anyways, we struggled with the questions up until to the point where my wife asked for a switch of tasks, with her driving and me navigating and finding the answers. Apparently we improved a lot after that. We thought later that we might want to keep this configuration for later hunts.

Breakfast & lunch was provided by McD, and for lunch we went to the one beside the Sunway toll on LDP. We had to submit our 1st leg answer sheet there, pick up the 2nd leg questions and buy 2 calendars which was the 2nd treasure hunt item. The calendars were part of the charity drive for the Bethany Home in Teluk Intan, Perak. Bethany Home is an E.L.C.M. training centre for the epileptic and intellectually disabled children and adults. The charity drive was a nice touch to the event, although I wish I had more time to ask questions to the guy in charge there about the home. I had by this time felt that my kidney was going to burst since I had been holding it since the start. Hahaha...

Next was the Puchong area, where by this time there's a lot of cars in the shops' area. A lot of honking were heard during this time. There was a polite short honk, a double/triple honk, and an angry long honk for the hunters to move aside. My wife had managed to remain calm all the way through this sector, and this is the part where the driver plays an important part in the team. DON'T BLOCK THE WAY WHEN YOU'RE HUNTING. That's the rule I try to keep to, and I told my wife to pay attention to all around us. She has to be able to position the car so that we can find answers as well as keep the road clear for the other users. I wouldn't want to comment on what the other teams did, as I would only want to concentrate on what we're doing during the hunts.

By the time we got to TTDI, we had 2 things against us: one was time, the other was rain...oh dear.Fortunately for us, that final sector was the easiest sector of all. Straight forward questions, and we didn't even have to stop to find the answers. We knew that we had to find time to rush back to the finish line, and before that find the treasure items! For this I have to thank DQ & Farid. We weren't sure what the items are, and DQ had said that she will only know for sure once she sees the items with her own eyes. We couldn't find any 7-11 on the way back (there was a lot earlier, but we didn't manage to figure out the answers at that time) so we stopped at the first petrol station that we could find, Caltex. Got 1 item there, and we're still missing 1 last item. And I remembered that there's a Petronas station just before the Mont Kiara junction, which is actually the last place you can buy stuff before reaching the finish line at SDCC. Lo and behold, when we got there the item that we were looking for was in abundance! In the end we managed to reach the finish line on time.

I think by the time we submitted the first leg answers, we knew we wouldn't win the hunt, hehe...So, the 2nd leg was a bit easier for us as we didn't have that "pressure" to win the hunt and were only aiming to finish the hunt and improve on our standings as compared to last year. The dinner was excellent, the food was okay for a big event and the hall was very comfortable as compared to previous years. When the results were tabulated we scored 101 which won us 42nd place out of 145 teams, which was a jump from our previous year's position which was 88th. The Masters category was won by Farid's "good friend" (hehe..), Michael Pang and his team. The results can also be found here.

We enjoyed it, even though we didn't win big. It's all for fun and we just love the challenge. On to the next hunt...!

That Hunting Weekend - Part 1

We had a very busy schedule last weekend. There were 2 treasure hunts competition that we went to. First on the 1/11, was the 3K Triple One Hunt (Kembara Karun KSAS) organized by the Trailblazers team. Most of the teams treated this as a warm up to the big event, The Sun Hunt 2008 which was on the next day!

3K Triple One Hunt

We were missing 1 team member, DQ had to work on that Saturday. We were a bit skeptical that we could do well in the hunt, but since we really wanted to have this "warm up", we decided to go ahead nonetheless. We've also decided to use a smaller car, since there is only the 3 of us, with the starting configuration of me driving, my wife navigating from the back seat and Farid at the front passenger seat for easy access and exit. It would soon change, though.

The hunt was organized with 2 categories, the open category and the classic car category, i.e. cars that are registered before 1983. I think there was supposed to be 4 teams, but one of the car broke down and couldn't make it...I also heard that Dato' Ramesh & Kok Seng's team's car also broke down but they managed to find another classic car, which I heard was a Porsche (?). Anyways, I saw only 3 classic cars in the hunt, and they are also eligible for the open category prize as well. No guesses as to who won the classic car category. The hunt itself was tough. I think a lot of the teams "suffered", particularly because we had only 3 hours plus for answering 30 route questions plus 4 treasure questions. We knew that time is going to be a big factor in this and the difficult questions wasn't helping at all. That's the first challenge. The 2nd challenge was making a good start, which we always "kantoi" in most hunts, the 3rd was the treasure questions, which we found out later that we may not have enough time to go out and buy the items. We neither start well, nor did we do well in the rest of the route questions.

All in, we managed to finished the hunts, via some "tembak" answers on my part and Farid. Mid-way thru the hunt we switched drivers, because my wife was feeling dizzy sitting at the back, and we found out that I was better at finding the answers when I'm not driving. D'huh... Due to the time constraint however, I had to rush writing the answers, and I was convinced that I'll do some mistakes in writing it out since I didn't have time to check on what I had written before submitting the answers.

Anyways, when it was the answers session we found out that a few of the "tembak" questions were right! Hahaha...It was really fun throughout the session, and we thought that we had a good chance of winning something. Our count for the total points were 70 plus, and when the Trailblazers team announced the no.10 spot with a score of 50 plus, we knew we were in for something. As the teams were called up to the stage to collect the prizes: 9, 8, 7, 6, 5...4, 3, 2, 1...? Our team name wasn't called up. My wife was confused, as were Farid and myself. When we asked one of the captains for our team's score, he said it was only 40 plus....which confused us even further. So we asked to see our answers sheet, and had to wait till Capt. Jack Swallow finishes the formalities with the audience. By this time, I was convince that it was my fault that we lost 30plus points...I had convinced myself that I must had written the answers wrongly or left out a few answers details even more than I thought I would have.

As the other teams left the hall, and the winners carried their winnings...we waited for our answer sheet. At first glance, I thought everything was as what we marked in our copy, which added to the mystery of how we lost 30 points. That was until I saw the calculation for the answers...The total answers we got right was 21, each correct answers is worth 3 points, and written in the table was the figure 36. As I pointed to Captain Jack and clarified with him that the total should read 63...He let out a gasp and a "Oh my God..." and rushed back to the hall to meet up with the other captains. All 3 of them apologized to us profusely for the mistake, and Captain Jack gave us a cash prize of RM150 - equivalent to the 8th placed prize.

The knowledge that we actually won something in that hunt just gave us a little bit of confidence to do well, or at least improve our results in the big hunt: The Sun Hunt, the next day. We actually met with Captain Jack, and he said that he have already sent out the corrected results to Michael Pang, which can be found here. We appreciated what they've done for us, and hoped that we can join in their next hunt, with a view of winning it and getting on stage that time...!

We're on Michael Pang's Blog...!

Hey...what a pleasant surprise today....our treasure hunt team was featured on Michael Pang's blog. He is not only a regular treasure hunter, where we often see him joining hunts (and winning it!), but have organized treasure hunts as well.

Check out what he said about us here.

Lil Shaggy

Continuing on from the 3 lil kittens' story, there's only 1 surviving kitten. I guess God had plans for the lil dude, and it was my wife who found it alive and well amongst her pots of flowers and plants. That I think, soothes her pain and shock of finding the dead kitten a few days before. She wondered what to do about the surviving kitten, and I told her that we might as well keep the kitten inside the house, to make sure that at least the lil dude will get a fighting chance to grow up stronger.

When I got back in the morning, as soon as I saw the kitten at the pots, I took the lil dude inside. Since we didn't have any cage or proper place for safekeeping, I barricaded the lil dude inside the bathroom. I know it's a bit uncomfortable, and he didn't like it, but it's for his own safety.

The mother, unfortunately, has a lot of...er...admirers...haha...Yeah, the male cats seem to be waiting in line to get a piece of her. She's a pretty cat...haha...like a cat version of Erra Fazira, as I described her to my friends. We're worried and suspected that it was one of the male cats that killed the 2 other kittens.


We finally bought a cage for the lil kitten, just so that he has a place to sleep in, and to keep him from roaming around the house and leaving his...er..presents... :-) And we keep him in the house, so that no other cats can bother him except for the mother. We let him out whenever me or my wife is at the house. And the mother does come by to visit, whenever she's not with one of the "boyfriends"...haha...She nurses the lil dude, although I'm not sure if there's still milk left in her...How do I check that eh...??

Anyways, the lil dude is kinda thin, which worries my wife. So she bought some kitten food, and more food for the mother as well. At least if the mother is around, she can keep the lil dude company while he eats. Which she does, regularly...I think she's beginning to understand why we keep her kitten in the house, so she waits for her "visiting time", and when it comes, she uses it fully.

The kitten, we nicknamed Shaggy...after the character in Scooby Doo...When the others were around, he was the most scared of them all. Always hiding behind something either a pot, wall or even behind my shoes. So that's why we named him "Shaggy". But now, we noticed that he carries the traits of the other 2 kittens as well. Explorer like the kitten we nicknamed "Indy", always going around the house, trying to climb up the stairs to follow my wife, but can't since he's small. And he also carries the "space out" look like the other kitten, which we nicknamed "Putom"...It's kinda funny looking at him running around the house, and since he's so small, we keep reminding ourselves to look at our feet as we walk, as he tends to follow us around the house.

Hope he survives...Here's to Shaggy...the lil dude...