Ah the 11th of April has finally arrived. It didn’t really help since I was stuck in the office last night with some catching up to do (I will be away the whole of next week attending another workshop). Yesterdat was the day that I began my hectic schedule.
Well its not like this week has been a walk in the park. With many deadlines to meet and constantly being at meetings in work, I have been leaving the office late at night that I didn’t have the time to make it for cell and even my Thursday night golf lessons which sucked. Last weekend was a dream as I had my company’s annual dinner and dance last Friday night and guess what? I won a Nintendo Wii during the lucky draw. This was my first ever lucky draw win in my life
The following bits were actually written yesterday so try not to mind the present tense grammar from this point onwards.
Recap….
9.00am and I am already sipping on my coffee looking through the various emails in my work inbox and as I slowly watch the time before starting my teleconference with my senior manager in Singapore, I decided to make sure that everything is going fine.
Well for one thing which has me smiling at work today (it looked like I had slept with a clothes hanger in my mouth) was that my new baby arrived. I am typing this bit of post on it right now and I am really trying to get used to the new keyboard shortcuts.
By 11.40am I was ready to head to the airport and thanks to my good buddy Vincent who agreed to send me to the LCC Terminal, I was all set and ready to go. Of course like all good planning, things go wrong. Nothing wrong occurred of course but we got held up a little bit but I still managed to reach the LCC terminal on time and checked in with plenty of time to spare.
Lunch was at McDonalds and yes, I lost the best. I was supposed to stay away from fast food for two months and after a week, I gave in. Well, it wasn’t entirely my fault, there isn’t any place to eat in the LCC Terminal! Everywhere was packed with people and I had no choice to eat at McDonalds because I was short of time and the customer turnaround there was way quicker than the other place.
The wonders of AirAsia and the relatively cheap flights, recently they have been checking every passenger’s hand luggage to check if they exceed the weight limit and it seems that they were charging the passengers additional costs for each additional kg over the weight limit. A bold move indeed by Mr. Tony Fernandes.
I reached Penang on time and with no problems, the airport was relatively full with passengers waiting to board the plane and the duty free shops looked tempting. To me, the first thing I wanted to do was check into the apartments I am staying in and taking a nice cool shower.
The taxi cost was about RM47.00 which was a little steep if you ask me considering Penang is a small island but the worst has yet to come. Not only did the taxi booth charged me RM47, they really shouldn’t put the sign “LIMO†on it because the taxi I sat in was far from what one would even call a decent car. But hey, who am I to complain? I flew all the way to Penang just to learn and absorb from one of the reknowned wedding photographers in Malaysia and soon to be Asia.
After 10 minutes of sitting in the taxi whilst trying not to concentrate on how run down the taxi was (it was the old stretched proton saga where the rear seat passengers have a little more leg room), I started to smell something weird. Turned out that the taxi’s air condition failed and there was some electrical short. Being the usual me, I just told the taxi driver who was a nice old malay man that we can just wind down the window and get some nice fresh air.
Contrary to fresh air, Penang ain’t a place which offers fresh air. Other than the usual busses and their wonderful exhausts, the heat was getting to me but that didn’t bother me. Thank God that I remembered to bring my trusty iPod along and I was catching an episode of CSI New York. The only thing was that I kept getting distracted because the taxi driver didn’t know exactly where the apartments was and I had to show him some directions.
I stayed in the same apartments a long time ago, way back in 1999 after my SPM examination where me and a group of my friends from school took a road trip up to Penang and spent a week there. We travelled by train (overnight!) and it was an awesome experience. Ever since then, Penang has changed so much with plenty of development springing about everywhere.
Anyway it might seem that I have a lot to write but that is because I have an hour to kill before I start heading out to the workshop and run a couple of errands before that. Sadly there isn’t any internet connection at where I am staying and it really made me wish that I had those wireless connection thingamajigs. If I can’t find a place with free wireless internet, I guess this post might only be up on Monday.
Until then, its about time to head out for my workshop. I predict that something inside of me will definitely change and it will definitely be credited to this workshop I attended.
