KL Here I Come

It feels good to travel especially when the air-tickets would not be borned by me. :)

Left work after 4.30p.m. and rushed home to shower so that I could get out of the house before 5.00p.m. to beat the peak hour traffic congestion. CTY fetched me to the airport and the traffic congestion started before the Lintas-Lido intersection.

Arrived airport before 6.00p.m. Checked at the entrance where I should go for check-in. (Last week mum checked in at Row A). I had to go to Row B. Before that, I had to get my baggage scanned first. The queue to the check-in counters was so long until I was waiting almost at the entrance of Row B. It was a common check-in for a mixture of flights. Took around 20mins for my turn. By the time I arrived at the check-in counter, the counter was closed. I had to go to another counter while the four students at the back of me had to go back to queue up.

My baggage weighed about 7kg, with another bag inside the baggage so that I could put all my shopping stuff inside.

Departures are at Level 3 at KKIA. MASWings, MAS office, Korean Air office, Dragon Air office, Aseana Air office, etc are at Level 2. Arrivals are at Level 1.

After I went passed Immigration, I went surveying at the departure lounge. As I was walking towards the gate I needed to depart from, I saw a lot of Japanese who just arrived from Japan on the flight I was going to take to go to KL. Many of them were wearing mask on their face. This is due to the recent outbreak of H1N1 flu in Mexico and after that various places around the world including Hong Kong.

When I was waiting at the departure lounge, I thought I saw someone I recognised passed by. A day earlier Ir. Foo had mentioned to me he would be going to Taipei with his family for a short trip and would be checking out Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world for the meantime. By the time I wanted to say hello, he was nowhere in sight. His flight must have delayed by about 1.5 hours because he told me he would leave at 6.30p.m. and therefore we would not be able to meet each other. I also did not call him upon checking in.

My flight was supposed to depart at 7.30p.m. but all passengers did not board the plane until 8p.m. When I found my window seat, there was a girl in her 20’s sitting on it. She did not apologise or ask whether I minded. I was in a good mood and therefore did not want to make a scene. I found a pillow and blanket on the seat.

Since the plane was a B777-400, the duration of the flight would be shorter ie. 20mins lesser than a B737. The ETA was 10.00p.m. but we could reach KL at 10.10p.m. eventhough the flight was delayed by half an hour.

For a B777-400 plane, the seats are two on the left and right with five seats in the middle ie. altogether 9 seats in one row.

Dinner was served after about an hour after air borned. We had a choice of fish or chicken and I chose chicken.

All throughout the flight, there was turbulence but it was still bearable. Therefore shots taken were not that great.

Every seat has its own entertainment screen and each passenger is allowed to select whatever he or she chooses to do. I tried to watch the movie ‘The Reader’ after dinner but could not concentrate much and therefore decided to take a rest instead.

This lady found empty seats at the back of the plane and had a snooze. She also skipped her dinner.

When the announcement came through the PA system telling passengers that we had landed at the Satellite Building of KLIA and warning about not to switch on the mobile phone until the door of the plane had opened, the mobile phone of a lady (who was sitting in the middle row, one row behind me) was ringing and she started talking. What an irony!

All passengers were required to take the Aerotrain from the Satellite Building to the Main Building of KLIA to claim our baggages. By the time I arrived at the baggage claim carousel at 10.45p.m. after a stop at the loo before boarding the Aerotrain, the baggages had just started to appear.

After claiming my baggage, I had to get out to the entrance of the arrival hall and went into the next entrance to take the lift to where the KLIA Express Terminal was situated. The next train due to leave KLIA was at 11p.m.

The journey took 28mins. One Korean man who was sitting one row in front of me across the aisle was keeping himself occupied by listening to music on his earphone and keying in his iPod. I was listening to Light & Easy Radio Channel using my mobile phone with earphones on.

I had trouble finding the exit from the KL City Air Terminal (KL CAT) in KL Sentral. Tracy had to give me direction since I could hardly see any visible direction. When I went downstairs to meet her at the place where I usually waited for her in the past, the place was blocked with no access whatsoever due to construction work in progress. I had to walk further to another place where she parked her car and she could not go far in case summon was being served on her.

We went back to Sunway and had supper. I was really hungry by then. I do not know why but my stomach can get hungry easily when I am not working and on holidays.

Eventhough the time was past midnight, the hawker stalls were filled with people eating and chatting. This is one thing that is truly unique about Malaysians: we can eat at anytime of the day or night as long as we can find food.

Early Payroll

Spent time doing the payroll until after midnight so that I could spend less time worrying about it during work hour tomorrow and concentrate on other urgent things to be done before I leave for KL for the long weekend.

Form BE

The messenger from the courier company came to collect our collective forms in one shipment to be couriered to KL.

Once again all of us can have some peace for another year before this annual affair repeats itself again.

Next year there is no more manual filing. Everyone has to use e-filing.

Form BE

All my colleagues had already passed to me their forms so that we can courier to KL at the same time.

Tonight I finished filling in the form. My initial estimate was correct. I had to pay more than three times income tax as compared to 2007. I wish my income was three times more though. Fat chance, wishful thinking only!

Still I thank God for the income earned in 2008, though a little bit of bonus is still outstanding.

1 Borneo

Today Dr. David Fung preached at Canaanland Celebration.

After the celebration, CTY and I went to 1 Borneo. It was good to be at this place esp. when the weather was so hot outside.

We had lunch at Michi Japanese Restaurant.

Lobster Salad

Sashimi with Rice

Asparagus

Soft Shell Crab

Tempura

After lunch we went our separate ways. I had to spend my RM250 vouchers – RM200 at urban inc and RM50 at The Station.

Since I lost more weight recently, trying on clothes becomes even more fun. I could try on more clothes.

With the RM200 worth of vouchers, I chose three pieces of clothing from urban inc.

1. A brown blouse.

2. A grey tshirt. For the first time in my life, I have a tshirt that is worth about RM70 in my wardrobe. Of course the quality of the tshirt is different from those I have been wearing all this while. It is so soft.

3. A white sleeveless tshirt.

I could not choose any clothes with the RM50 voucher at The Station because all clothes were more than RM100 a piece. I wanted to get a belt but it was too loose for me and the shop does not offer service to punch extra holes. I settled for a piece of lousy accessory. I would not have bought it if I was using my own money.

After spending all the vouchers, I went down to the Lower Ground Floor again. 1 Borneo Management had invited some Chinese people from the PRC to their establishment.

This Chinese lady is an artist who charges RM30 to draw one person and RM50 for two persons.

These gentlemen are using grass to make things like birds, grasshoppers, etc.

Then it was off to GSC to meet CTY again to watch movie – Shinjuku Incident starring Jackie Chan, Daniel Wu, etc.

(Normally I do not like to watch any movies starring Jackie Chan but after reading some good reviews in the internet, I went against the norm).

There were less than twenty people in the whole cinema and there were two guys sitting in front of us at different rows who were watching the movie alone. (I never watch any movie alone in my entire life).

Eventhough there were certain parts of the movie which were quite bloody, there were others that were pretty touching as well. And one Japanese little girl is extremely cute.

After the movie, we went to Giant Hypermarket so that I can buy some veges. After paying for the stuff, I saw some workers mopping water (from the sewer) at the entrance of the hypermarket. Yucks!

As we were leaving the hypermarket, I saw the guy who requested me to obtain a Citibank Credit Bank when I was leaving Giant Hypermarket Kolombong a few weeks ago.

We went to Old Town White Coffee for dinner. Both of us wanted to have ‘Asam Laksa’ but it was all sold out. :(

Prawn Mee

Chicken Rendang with Rice

Roses in the Vase

Finally …

I decided to venture into the exercise department after a snooze of an hour this afternoon.

Today is another hot day and since my excuse up until now for not being able to exercise was due to the rain, the hot weather was not going to deter me this time round.

But I did not feel like driving all the way to the Likas Sports Complex to exercise and decided to do it around my neigbourhood.

Yes, I finally did it after about four months of talking. Or more like twelve months plus four months = sixteen months.

Armed with my about 20 years old Reebok shoes, my sunnies and mobile phone with earphone intact so that I can listen to the radio, I started out at 5.40p.m. I decided to walk to the part of the neigbourhood I less travel and see if I could discover anything new.

While brisk walking, I discovered there is actually another housing estate inside my housing estate with 16 lots with beautiful houses.

The weather has been great with a slight breeze. In between the one hour I also jogged a bit. I did not want to over strain myself since I have not exercise for about two and a half years.

I sweated and felt great afterwards. My body was not aching at all.

But when I wanted to shower, suddenly there was no electricity. So I had to shower practically in the dark.

After that I also had my dinner with the aid of of a portable fluorescent light.

Thank God there was still a slight breeze to make the night not as hot as it could be.

I lied on the sofa set and listened to the radio on my mobile phone for about an hour before CTY and I went to Food City to drink, eat and chit-chat for two and a half hours.

Yes, I can say I smell the roses today, so to speak and if I do not exercise anymore for the rest of this year, at least I can say I did it for an hour on the same Saturday as the week of my birthday.

54M Wireless ADSL2+ Router

Finally found out the passkey for CTY to have access to the internet in Jeff's room. I can breathe a sigh of relief.

Actually the technician had already given me the passkey when he passed the router to me last December. But we both forgot about it. I had to go to the IP Address of the router and obtained the information from there under the technician's instructions.

Phone Call

Spoke to mum and Uncle Ho moments ago. Mum said she has been eating a lot.

Last night they were at a place called Brighton for dinner. The parking fee came to RM17.50 upon conversion.

Uncle Ho checked the return airfare from London to California and the amount is around RM2K. The fare is still way cheaper than the one way airfare from California to KL for RM4K.

Guest in the House

Tonight James and family came back from KL. My sis-in-law’s brother, Winston and I went to T2 airport to fetch them.

Since Winston is here with his parents and are staying at James’s house, CTY who came back from Teluk Intan with James and family tonight is staying in Jeff’s room.

CTY and I found out that I do not have the passkey for my modem in order for CTY to go online in Jeff’s room. I called my technician and he did not answer my call or reply my sms.