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... :-)