HSBC Sports Club Family Dinner.

Everyone else bought their family there. Being the youngest staff in that branch, and family-less, I felt like I should put myself out for adoption. The commercial banking of Kuantan branch became part of my family, at least for the next half a year.

 

and the weirdest thing that happen that night? I won the best dress award! Jeez.

Life@HSBC

Its been great so far.

I already feel like a king. Arrived and checked in at a hotel way above my expectation. My stay here for 21 days cost them around 3-4k.

Working was not too bad. I'm so grateful that I took accounts back in secondary school. Now I'm looking at them on a daily basis. It's nice to have access to all the company records. So don't piss me off. I can check if your are borrowing money from anybody. Lol.

Going to meet the CEO and Director tomorrow. Yay.

Reflections of 2010

Wow! Another decade. It was a long while since 2000, where the worries were about Y2k and 1st day at secondary school. Today presents different challenges; my first day in a new company, meeting day to day's need and also searching for a goal, direction and perspective.

As it was customary to reflect what I have done the the year before; I find it more important that ever, that I write it all out today since I have left almost every significant event of 2010 out of my blog this year. So here to summarize the year filled with trips, milestones and memories.

January - the beginning of the end (of uni life)
It was a great way to usher in a new year with someone special.

and a budget trip to Cameron Highlands with Muharram, Ting Ting and Sarah. This trip turns out to be the most cost effective and one of the trips I really really enjoyed.  Definitely going to come back here again sometime this year.

February - the holiday fever continues
Chinese New Year was celebrated with a trip to Langkawi with my bros, playing 007, small fish big fish till 4am in the morning.

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March - my baby.
It grew 1 year older. The 2nd Malaysia Debate Open was remembered as one of the best regional debate tournament of that year, thanks to the awesome organizing team led by Arun and Sarah.

Also, there's a new baby that came to our family.

April - Thermoaccoustic Laminar Flow Engine.
The last stage of my Final Year Project. Somehow, I managed to crap my way though a A-, a journal entry and a lecture in Taiwan with a silly research on thermoaccoustic engine.

May - Mechanical Class of 2010
The final month for MMU's Mechanical Student was a nightmare due to a sudden revelation by our administration that they left out an core subject in our syllabus. So we had 3 days to study for one of the hardest paper in our course. But it also because of this issue, our people in our class got pretty close to prepare for this problem together.

It also turns out to be less disastrous for me as I was the one of the two lucky ones who pass the paper on first attempt (out of 148 students). With that done, my holiday/debate trip for 2 months began. First stop, the All Asians University Debating Championship in Bangkok, follow by a 3 week tour to Amphawa, Krabi, Phi Phi Island and Phuket.

June - Aussie, oy oy oy!!

Had my first skiing experience in Melbourne with Nick. Turns out that I didn't fall as much as I expected. Had 5 successful runs (definition of successful remain subjective) on Mt Buller without breaking my leg

and a great side trip to Ballarat, town of gold mining with Ching Yee, Sebastian, Nick and Alva without any success of finding gold.

Just before I left Australia for New Zealand, I played had my first golf session for this year with my uncle (first of many this year) and his porche. (unfortunately, still the first and only so far).

July - NZ, the city of sheep.. bekkkkk..

Made ESL Finals in Australs, and spoke about politics in a cathedral. (blasphemous)

We droved 300km down south to Rotorua where we had dip in the hot spring at night (where the temperature is at 2 degree Celsius), trespassed someone's lake house and took random pictures with cows at the road side.

And with this final trip, my working life as a Tunnel Engineer in Taiping begins.

August - Merdeka!!

Officially now a graduate with a First Class Honours Degree in Mechanical Engineering. Thank you MMU. You suck! :)

The only thing academic left is my lecture presentation at the WSEAS Conference for Heat, Thermal, Energy and Environment in Taiwan. I arrived there on 19th August at 11.30pm, with nowhere to go, no hotel room book and no friends. Not being able to read in Chinese nor speak Mandarin well, I wandered alone for the next 3 hours in search of the cheapest budget hotel to spend the night. 

Thankfully, the rest of the days was much better. After my conference, I dragged the guests in my hostel (8 of them) to a club, and we partied at downtown till 4am.

Coming back home, Sarah and I had a quiet independence day celebration at Penang and Taiping.

September - Surprise surprise!

Had my first surprised birthday party!! With all the thambi, puki and minum. Bros and hoes for life :)

October - Tunnel Breakthroughs

It was THE month for the Tunnel Team of this Electrified Double Track Project. A major progress was made with our tunnel breakthrough of the left bore on beginning of October and right bore on the end of November. I was lucky enough experience it despite working for a mere 3 months then.

Heck, we were even on all the major newspaper in Malaysia. Forever proud that we have contributed and played a direct role in Malaysia's infrastructure development.

November 2010 - Kingdom of Far Far Away

... is actually not very far away at all. It's just down south, in the Universal Studio of Singapore. 

It really felt like we left earth and went into a fairy tale land. Singapore does seems to have everything better. Damm.

December - Season of Joy and Happiness.

I never had a job interview before prior to the HSBC's. So it was quite a blessing that I received the job offer, on my first attempt, at a field that I am absolutely clueless about. 

Still dwelling in confusion, I suddenly realized that it was Christmas, resigned from my job, and welcomed new year without making any resolutions. It was an abrupt end, maybe perhaps due to the fact that I really didn't see it coming. That 1st January of 2011 is today.

 Looking back on all the things I went through, I really wondered, did so many things happen in just one year? 

Thank you 2010, I hope 2011 will be equally kind. 

Convocation in 3 days time.

Throughout the first week, I really enjoyed my working here. Sure, things could have been better, like friendly colleagues but the environment here is already far better than my previous internships. My routine work for now is to go to site and learn all the construction methods while study all the drawings and paperwork in the office.

I'll be placed on 12 hours shift from next week onwards. Sounds tough and tiring. I dreaded that fact but will take it as an opportunity to learn more. (After all, I did went to work on Sunday even when it's my off day).

And in 3 days time, I will be officially graduated :) Yay. Going to begin a new chapter of life.

Taiping

Today is officially my first day working as a full fledge engineer in Gamuda.  I have spent much of the last 2 week whining about the fact that I’ll be placed far away again, this time in Taiping; a town in the middle north of Perak.  A town without big shopping malls and popular franchises.  A town of laid back lifestyle, with Sunday activities meant picnic at a part. A town that I fell in love at first sight.

Except for the fact that its more than 3 hours drive from home and I have not known a single living soul here, this is an ideal place that I always had in mind (albeit to retire, not to work/live).  The town reminds you of those nice outskirts in the western countries.

I brought my family around the area for 2 days. We visited the Night Safari and Maxwell Hill. The view on top of the hill is quite pleasing. The ride however was not. I nearly vomited during the 20 minute rides up the hill on the jeep.

I started my first day at work today. Will blog about it soon. Freaking tired. Snores.

Ballarat, old town of gold.

Will you rent a car in a foreign country, drive 2 hours away, pay over a 100 ringgit for entrance fee just to enter into a old cowboy ghost town?

Logic and sense have deserted me when I did exactly just that. On 24th of June, I arrive at the old gold mine of Ballarat, the Sovereign Hill. 

Fine. It wasn't completely deserted. It is after all, a major tourist attraction for those who go to Melbourne. And since it's the first time I entered a gold mine, it was fairly exciting... in a way.

I get to pan for gold, in the cold (rhymes). And I got nothing. :(

After panning for 15 minutes, I looked as stupid as this sheep.

There isn't awfully much to see at Sovereign Hill. I wouldnt really recommend people to go especially if you have very little time to spare. Of course, when you're like me who's there for the 3rd time with nothing on my schedule, then you can perhaps consider place.

The one thing I found fairly interesting what gold. (duh). There's this session where you get to see them pour molten gold and form it into a bar.

And guess how much that bar's worth. 144 000 Aud Dollar!!!!!! For such a small thing. And I had a rare opportunity to hold it for a minute. (with a gun pointed very closely to me.)

Maybe.... it will be more fun if I steal it and run away with the typical horse cart. Reenact an old cowboy gold robbery.

That should add some life to this boring old gold mine.

Skiing on Mt. Buller, Melbourne.

I'm going to attempt to track all my holidays I made in the past half a year and post it here. That should give me a good ground to start blogging again.

I finally went back to Melbourne, for the 3rd time. Motivated by the fact that I did'nt manage to go skiing in the last 2, I make it a resolution not to miss is this time, not matter how much it cost. To make sure it's a go this time, I even drag Nick, who drag his French gay partner, Sebastian, and Ching Yee to come along.

It's just that I never anticipate that the cost was so exorbitant, that I nearly pass on it again. A 3 day trip is going to cost 600 Aud dollars, nearly equivalent to my budget for the entire trip. In the end, Ching Yee and I decided to take only a one day trip that cost 200$. Nick and Sebastian who have the cash to spare, decided to spend some alone time and head up there for all 3 days. Damm, those working guys.

It took 4 hours to get from Melbourne City to Mt. Buller. Even though we left at 6.30am, it was nearly noon by the time we get our ski equipments and reach bottom of the skiing area. With the amount of money I paid, I only have 4 hours left before heading back down towards the city at 4pm. 

So that's 4 hours for learning how to ski.  Nick and Sebastian (who already knows how to ski/snowboard) already had a number of runs by the time we arrive and meet them on day 2 of their trip. Thankfully, skiing wasn't as horribly hard as I imagine it to be. I was expecting to fall like crazy and not be able to walk for days after that. 

I manage to move on my first try. The only problem was stopping. So I had to fall to stop, which was not too bad considering the numerous layer of cloth I was wearing to withstand the cold. (4 tops and 3 bottoms, underwear not included.) But ultimately, I think having ice skated a lot in the past helps tremendously. The snow gave a very familiar sensation with ice, and the brakes techniques can be adopted as well (hockey stop).  

Right after my first slope, I ran to purchase the lift card (cost me 50$) and tried to ski all the way down from the station. It was terrifying. The slopes was much steeper than I can imagine, and I was speeding so much that I'm was almost certain I'm going to get a ticket. Unable to stop at that speed, I had to fall again before I hit someone else. The fall was so hard, that the skis came off from my leg and the poles were more than 15 meters apart. 

Funny enough, I stood up and didnt feel much pain. I took me 5 runs before I finally manage to control my speed. Until then, I nearly crash into the ski lift's supporting pillar, ran off the skiing area (into the walking area with no snow), almost knock into some kids and an old man, caused another amateur skier to fall to avoid me and got a warning to have my lift card revoke if I continue skiing like a madman. 

Lol. Remember to avoid going to the same mountain the next time I come skiing.