“What I’ve Been Up To …”

Pic of our 3rd gathering i think, It’s the first one with pix. The previous 2 were at night. I’ve misplace the original pix. This one is when we were getting ready for a photo shoot. Many others were on the way to joni the group.

Today is a special day for me and my school friends (nothing to do with USA’s 4th of July). Unfortunately I won’t be joining them

It all started early this year, when we were toying with the idea of having a gathering to commemorate 30 yrs since we left school (in 1979, of course). We eventually agreed on 4th July 2009 as the big day, to have a dinner at Perdana Beach Resort, and maybe with some activities at our alma-mater, SMSTMFP.

I booked the Firefly “RM0″ tickets in March for me, Nury and Sal**. Others followed suit - some booked Air Asia and MAS.

My plan was to have some motivation sessions with the students of our alma-mater today in the afternoon, before we have the dinner and donate some books to the school library. Since I am not going to make it (I was supposed to organise it), it’ll only be a book presentation tomorrow morning (it’s a school day there).

Out of 130+ of all the former students of my batch, we’ve finally located and contacted about 110 of them! That includes some who have passed away. That’s quite an achievement. I think for tonight’s event, there’ll be about 90 of them, since quite a few of us who couldn’t attend it .

So, for me, I’m going to Penang via Ipoh. Will attend a wedding do in Ipoh (Nuni’s kindergarten’s friend is getting married. Her mother was my colleague when I was teaching in Ipoh).

We will detour to Kuala Sepetang to look for the famous prawn mee (My FIL’s wish) before heading towards Penang. Nuni’s function will be tomorrow. We will only get home late tomorrow night.

Till then, have a good weekend everyone! And to my friends in Kota Bharu, have a awsome gathering, and don’t forget to send me the photos, so that I can blog about it!

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Pix taken in 2007

Nury was my classmate during our 5 years in secondary school (1975-1979).  We became close friends from 1976 onwards. I’ve met many other great people who have become my close and long-term friends, but nobody can replace Nury as my best friend.

We were separated in 1980 when I went to Adelaide for my degree and she went to Charleston, South Carolina for hers. The funny thing was that a few months earlier we attended the same interview together. Those bound for Down Under knew the results earlier - even before we sat for our MCE (now SPM) exams, however Nury and a few others got to know of the scholarship offer much much later and left for The States well ahead of us!

The last time I met her before she went to the states  (in Jan 1980, I think, or maybe Dec 1979) I gave her a pair of earrings. When Nuni got 10As for her SPM, Nury gave the earrings back to Nuni! Oh, did I tell you that Nuni was named after Nury? Both have Nuraini as their official name.

Nury had been my pillar of strength during my turbulent years in the late 1970s. She gave me moral and financial support. Nothing can repay her for what she had done for me. So it was nothing when Nuni was named after her. Even after we’ve started work, she helped me a lot. She even helped me to get the forms to apply for the post of lecturer at UiTM. She took me to the interview place, and sent me back home (in Ampang then) after the interview.

Over the years, we tend to forget our each other’s birthdays. However, there were some memorable birthdays. When we were in Form 5, I wrote to Harjit Singh Hullon (who was the morning DJ for Blue Network radio station then), asking him to play an ABBA song on her birthday, which he did! He read my birthday dedication to her and played the song “Take A Chance on Me” (even though I asked for a different song, it was still an ABBA’s). The whole school got to know about her birthday that day! Then a few years ago, I emailed to Light FM about her birthday, and the DJ (I think it was Ross) called her to wish her Happy Birthday. There was also a year when I brought Koleh Kacang to her office for birthday!Unfortunately, most years, I just missed her birthday.

So, Nury, this year I remember and here on my blog entry today, I am wishing you Happy Birthday. May you have many happy returns today and in the years ahead.

If you can come somewhere near my office today, I’ll belanja you lunch. I have no car today. Nuni’s car tire punctured, and she’s taking mine.

BTW, Nury is a lecturer at UiTM, and have 3 wonderful kids, age between 17 and 13. She lives somewhere in Klang with her DH and kids.

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Yesterday we sent Ayi to the airport. He’s going back to Hamilton, Canada. He was not supposed to come home for summer this year, but after the European trip with us, he came back with us.

A month was indeed very short, but then Ayi has other plans for summer.

While waiting for Ayi to check in, we had some nice chocolate drinks. Nuni took some pix. If she sends them to me, then I can upload them here.

See other pix and Nuni’s blog here, instead.

We all miss him, and hope to be able to meet him again next year - maybe we will visit him, who knows..

And for the record, Aina’s digital piano was delivered tonight. I hope it will help her prepare for her exam next week.

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I checked my email at about 5.30pm, and found out that Deng was to meet another “long lost” friend, Rozi, in Section 7. Rozi joined our e-group this morning, and suddenly he was in touch with so many of us.

After almost 45 minutes braving the traffic jam, I joined Rozi and Deng (at normal time, it would take less than 15 minutes for me to get there!).

Here’s a shot of Rozi (left) and Deng (right):

I tried to take a solo pic of Rozi, but it was blur , but to my friends who have not seen him for ages, here’s the shot:

All these years, Rozi had been living in Shah alam, and we NEVER crossed path! Come to think of it, even if we did, I would not have recognised him.

How would I recognise him. Look at our class photo in 1976, Rozi squatting fifth from left:

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I am now at the Penang International Airport, waiting for the flight home.

This is this morning shot from my hotel window:

Can you see the mountain peak at the back? I think it’s Jerai Mountain, what do you think?

It’s much clearer today, compared to the pic I took last Monday:

And before I forgot, I took the shot of my bed (the 3rd/additional bed in the room):

OK, the bed was in a mess, because the shot was only taken this morning.

I totally forgot to snap any pic during training, and almost forgot to distribute the evaluation forms!

The hotel conciege and En Ahmad was smart at optimising the space in the boot to fit in our stuff (we are bringing the server home - a huge bag to carry it). As En Ahmad offloaded from the Perdana that sent us to the airport:

I’m coming back to Penang next Saturday (not tomorrow). This time will not be for training, but to attend Nuni’s convo.

To be continued later - if I remember!

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OK, not really Penang, but the down town near Komtar.

It was last Tuesday evening. We wanted to look for dinner, so we thought we’d go to the nearby Perangin Mall.

Once inside, we couldn’t find any interesting eatery - we’re not interested in McD, nor Pizza Hut nor KFC (though we didn’t see KFC). Inside the mall:

Another view:

We were not interested to shop.

WE then walked out of the mall, and ended up going  round the mall:

between Perangin Mall and KOMTAR:

And we saw our hotel in the background:

We eventually ended up at a Nasi kandar stall in front of Gama. Here’s one of our plates:

A snapshot of Gama after our dinner:

And KOMTAR as we walked back:

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Yes, I am back in Penang. Only last Friday night I took the last Firefly flight back to Kuala Lumpur. This time I’m here for 4 nights instead of just 2 last week. And this time, our room is facing KOMTAR (last week we got one that faced the main road).

I’ll snap a pic of the view tomorrow, and will upload to this blog later.

In the mean time, I need to do some ironing and some revision, in preparation for tomorrow’s training session.

View from the hotel window:

KOMTAR is on the left, as shown here:

And this was all I got when I tried to capture KOMTAR from my hotel window:

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Pic taken from Pahang Tourism site.

I am refering to the Fraser’s Hills International Bird Race 2009. This year is our 6th year as the owner of our Siverpark (Fraser’s Hills) apartment, and we’ve never participated in any of the event before.

Here’s the regular logo of the event:

Pic taken from Pahang Tourism site.

I remember, during our first year, while the others were busy participating in the Race, we were busy furnishing the apartment. We had to go down to Raub to look for suitable furniture (that includes my favourite chairs and table for the balcony) and utensils. We promised ourselves to join in the event the year after. Unfortunately, for the next 5 rounds of the event, we were either away during the event, or we were around, but the kids (who were really interested to join in) were not around.

It’s the same case during the recently concluded weekend. DH and I went up the hills on Saturday afternoon (the event started early in the morning) with Ayi and Aina. Since I only got back from Penang just the night before, I was too tired to do anything else than to relax in the lounge and do some crochet . Maybe our family will join in the event next year?

It was drizzling on and off on Saturday though it was sunny yesterday (Sunday). As we were preparing to leave, the clouds just moved in. Here’s the shot taken just before 2pm yesterday:

The last time we were here was the weekend before we left for Stansted, over a month ago. The next we’ll be here? I don’t know. Definitely not during the next 2 weekends, because we’ve already got events lined up. May be 3 weeks from now?

I just love spending the weekend at the hills, but the drive up there is quite taxing, especially the winding 35km or so between the Selangor Dam and Fraser’s Hills.

BTW, someone blogged about the event here and here.

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Still under construction..

We finally finished the training just before 5pm today. We are now at the Bayan Lepas Airport, waiting for our flight home.

Let’s enjoy some pix..

Morning Session of the training :

On second thought, let’s skip those pix, and see where we headed to during lunchtime (Jumaat prayer time):

Yeah, we went downstairs of KOMTAR, but we didn’t even last 30 minutes there. We were too exhausted from the training and also the standing and moving around in the lab that we decided to go back to the lab and just rest while waiting for the afternoon session!

Only after the whole session was over, we went back to the next door hotel to collect our baggage and waited for the car to fetch us. Since we didn’t get to buy anything for our colleagues back in the office, we asked the driver to take us here:

Yes, it’s one of the stalls in Chowrasta Market. We wanted to buy some pickles for our colleagues back in the office. Those pickles are heavy! Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to really go around the market - or rather we were just too knackered to do so .

Aini capturing the sight:

Then, admiring the pix?:

while our car waited for us outside:

I know.. Wwe didn’t get yesterday’s car. It was a different driver too.

He had to brave through the traffic jam:

before we got onto Jelutong Expressway:

The traffic to mainland was slow, but ours was ok:

Finally we arrived at the airport:

When we arrived, it was only 6.15pm, but our flight is at 9.20pm, hence I started this blogging with the ice-blended mocha:

The notebook battery is running low now. Bye!

to be continued..

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I can only get free Internet access at the hotel lobby:

And I have to get the userID and password, which is valis for 24 hours:

Nice lobby (pic taken using my handphone):

while I “toiled” away with my notebook:

Anyway, today we had the training session at Level 24, KOMTAR.

Some of the pix of the training is session:

I was not the main trainer. My colleague, Anita is. Here’s Ita with Wani (From Unit HRMIS SUK PP) during one of the hands-on session:

SUK PP has high reputation in adopting HRMIS .

After the training, I managed to snap a couple of pix of the view from the balcony outside the computer lab where the training was held.

Note the Gama shopping mall:

Another view to the right:

After the training session, we walked back to our hotel which is just next door. I think walking back would be faster than driving, because if we were to drive, we would have to go round the KOMTAR building to get to the hotel entrance.

And here’s the right-hand side view from our hotel room (note Gama again):

And the view directly in front of our room:

Initiallly we planned to have seafood dinner at Batu Uban, but we later changed our minds. Instead we decided to go to Padang Kota for sight-seeing, and to have dinner somewhere there.

So, just before 7pm, we arrived at Padang Kota, thanks to En Johari.

En Johari, Ita and Aini with the Naval Base and  Fort Cornwallis in the background.

According to En Johari, we can get better pasembor at the New Padang Kota, near Gurney Plaza, so he took us there. It was difficult to get parking, so he parked the car near the roundabout:

I asked him, “Is it OK?”, he said it’s OK. Anyway we were not going to stay long. And don’t forget that this is our car:

Anyway, there were many other cars parked along the street, I comforted myself.

We sat at one of the tables, and ordered pasembor from this stall:

While waiting for our order to come, I decided to accompany Aini looking at other stalls. I managed to snap this one:

Then, suddenly someone called out my name, “Puan Sabariah?”. I looked at her, and noticed that she was one of my former “Diploma of Science with Education” (from UNISEL days) students! I had to apologise for forgetting her name, but Cecilia was prompt to tell me who she is. Cecilia who hails from Kuching, is here for a 2-week training at the Penang General Hospital. She told me that she’s very homesick already, but since she’s going back tomorrow, I am sure she can tolerate another day J .

A shot of Cecilia, with Puan Rokiah who’s from Melaka:

Now back to our meal, the pasembor was definitely better that those that I tasted at Padang Kota the last time I was there:

That was just one of the 2 plates. We also ordered char kuey teow and laksa penang .

Soon it was dark, and we decided to head back to our hotel:

En johari was very accommodating, he took us for a drive along the famous streets again – this time with the famous landmarks fully lit. Unfortunately, my instance camera’s not good enough to snap any pic while moving. I think I should come back here (these streets) when we come to Penang next month when we come for Nuni’s convocation, then DH can take some nice shots using his DSLR J .

That’s all for today… I need to do some report-writing (nothing to do with this training) that I promised another colleague back in the office that I’ll get mostly done by Monday!

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