» Bad news. Chuo Ming wasn’t the only victim of the theft that just occurred today. Mindy’s wallet was also stolen when she left in the living room. She had to make a lot of phone calls to report the lost. I’m braiding my hair tomorrow. aaahh I was in the basketball court, waiting for the basketball competition to start. After Chuo Ming told me that his phone was stolen, I was worried shit and rushed back home to check. Thank god, its still here. I still have to rush back to Goodwin Sport Centre for the competition in a while. Our team consists of the people who I usually play with in King Edward’s School. Jason, Chuo Ming, Charles, Alex and I will be in the first 5, while Frederick and Jonathan are reserved players. However, I insisted that Frederick should play in the first 5. I’ll substitute after the first half. Don’t ask me why, but I think all substitute players deserve at least a game. We were pretty worried about the game with the Chinese Society. You see, MASSOC and Chinese Society (Chisoc) have this implied rivalry and so far, MASSOC’s performance is much better than the Chinese Society in the social sense (ie events). This will be the first time Chisoc and MASSOC will be compete in a game of basketball with each other. Losing to Chisoc is the last thing we want to do.
– 11:20PM» Ah, I have just been informed that I’m no longer in the basketball team. The team captain submitted the teams’ form with his own preference without informing Chuo Ming first. Chuo Ming, who obviously didn’t know about it, recruited his own people and formed the team. And therefore, there were too many people in the teams. Since I’m went back home and even offered to quit the team, I’m not playing for MASSOC anymore. I think I’ll just go to Somerfield and get my groceries shopping done. hehe
– 4:40PM» Gah, I just rushed home to check my laptop. *phew* it’s still here. Apparently someone stole Chuo Ming’s hand phone when it was left in his room. Someone forgot to lock the door and probably the thief literally walked into the house.
– 4:30PM» Damn, all of a sudden, I was informed that I’m in the Malaysian and Singaporean Society (MASSOC) team B basketball team. Chuo Ming added my name into the list without telling me and later this evening, I will have to play against the Chinese Society and the Caribbean Society.
– 3:15AM
Month: November 2002
Basketball till sunset
» It’s funny how one’s luck changes within a short period of time. I had a really shitty day today. I missed my Muay Thai classes again this morning. I couldn’t wake up in time for it (even though the class is on 1pm). Secondly, for the umpteenth time, I injure myself while playing basketball. Someone smashed his shoulder on to my lip which subsequently bleed. And someone scratched my hand till it bleeds with his fingernails. I’m used with injuries nowadays and therefore it didn’t really spoil my day. Unfortunately, the calamities didn’t end that way. I lost my beanie, which is also a gift from my dad. I have no idea where I left it and checked every part in the house that I went to and even to the extent of walking back to the basketball court alone to search for it. The basketball court, located in a school, was pitch dark and deserted. I staggered unwillingly around the spooky area. Ironically, couple of months ago, I had a nightmare of that place. I dreamt that I was alone in the basketball court in the middle of the night and suddenly 2 balls kept on bouncing by its own. I was pretty disturbed by the nightmare for few days. The nightmare kept on playing on my head throughout the search. Despite the effort I put into my search for the beanie. It was never found. I’m deeply saddened with the lost of my beloved beanie!! sob!! » What a relaxing day. I woke up late in the afternoon, had brunch and then played basketball till sunsets (by the way, the sun sets at 5pm nowadays). We were playing with a bunch of Brits who weren’t really good. But it was worth a game. After the Brits left, we invited another bunch of Caucasians playing on the other basketball court. One of the guys suggested that we divide our team according to our race, and therefore it will be Asians v Europeans. I agreed with it but not with a racist intention. However, coincidently, Chuo Ming and I were wearing white t-shirts and Charles and Frederick were wearing black. The bunch of Caucasians was wearing the identical colours as us, two black t-shirts and 2 white t-shirts. We ended up dividing according to colour. Chuo Ming and I paired with Julius and Richard (the Caucasians). Unfortunately, Richard doesn’t really know how to play basketball. He was basically throwing the ball in all sorts of way. Despite that, we’re just playing for fun hence we don’t really care how the game is played. Nowadays, we made a habit of introducing ourselves to the other teams before we started playing. It seems that a basketball court is one of the best ways to make friends. Mindy made bread pudding today. She got the recipe from ‘The Naked Chef’s” cookbook. It’s pretty good especially the custard she made. She bought those mini Baileys liquor and mixed 2 small bottles into the custard. Yummy.
– 11:15PMSaturday, November 9, 2002
– 11:50
installed XP
» Horrible Horrible weather. Its been raining ever since this morning. I don’t mind it if I’m at home, sitting in front of the laptop, enjoying a cup of coffee with the heather on its maximum level. But unfortunately, this morning, with only 4 hours of sleep, I had to wake up at 730am just to attend a 9am seminar. To make the matter worst, its not the only class I have today. I still had to attend classes till 5pm. Furthermore I had to walk under the rain to another faculty just to attend different classes. Well obviously, this is nothing compared to work. When I was 12 years old, I was working in this Chinese coffee shop. I had to wake up at 6am every morning and stand on the sink, washing cups and utensils throughout the day.
– 11:00PM» I finally found the courage to format my laptop. It took me an hour to backup my files where i had to transfer all of them into Charles’s computer. And now, after 2 hours, my hardisk is partitioned and i’m running on Windows XP!
– 9:00PM
muay thai tonight
I bet Scotty is reading this. hehe
Once again, I missed my 9am Criminal evidence class today. I was already awake before 8am but unfortunately, I went back to sleep and woke up 4 hours later. uuhh
It seems that Tanaka sensei has been teaching Japanese for 7 years. He told us when I asked him a question regarding the ‘existent verbs’ in class today. My question was whether do we use ‘arimasu’ or ‘imasu’ when we refer to a sentence, which consists of an animate object and an inanimate object. He scratched his head and said, “My 7 years experience no one ever asked me this question!” It took him a while to figure out how to answer me and finally, he said that we could use ‘arimasu’ and ‘imasu’ according to the wording position of the subjects. For example “ringo (apple) to (and) neko (cat) ga imasu and “inu (dog) to toh keh (clock) ga arimasu. However, he vaguely explained to me that this sentence usually doesnt happen (??). I guess probably Japanese has another way of explaining it.
The people turning out for our Muay Thai classes are shrinking. There were barely 40 people attending the classes today. Fortunately, we managed to make a small profit for today.
My Windows ME is fucking up. It keeps crashing and hanging horridly for the past few days. I’m going to format it as soon as I backup all my files.
– 11:50PMHappy 20th Birthday to my darling Melodyyyyyyyy…….!
– 1:30AMI got this Korean MTV from Khai Fei. Watch it!
kiSs – i dont know what’s the fucking title! – (18mb)
– 12:05AM
aGM
After working together for 52 weeks, its time for the current MASSOC committee members to retire. This evening, the committees and MASSOC members gathered at The Frederick Mappins Building for the Annual General Meeting. The purpose of the meeting is for the committees to give their final speech (thank you note etc) and the most important of all, for the new candidates for the new committee to give their speeches.
Hiskandar, our president, delivered his last speech. He thanked everyone who are in the committee and sub committee and also personally thanked all those who helped MASSOC even though they’re not members.
As Hiskandar announced my name for my contribution as MASSOC Webmaster chief, my friends gave a thunderous applause accompanied by loud cheering. Everyone else was looking at me, I felt embarrassed but obviously, I never felt so proud before.
Allen’s final financial speech was next. He was expecting people to ask questions about his account but only one question was asked. I wanted to ask what made up the miscellaneous expenses (it was only £8) and whether did they spent the money for the KFC we bought for dinner last time. However, I knew it was a stupid question.
And the most awaited event was the Candidates speeches. Most of the speeches were boring but yet I stayed till the end to cast my vote. One of the candidates, Rachel, couldn’t make it to the AGM due to the fact that she’s in Malaysia. She printed out leaflets, made a video of her speech and played it to the members and lastly she got a phone that enables her to speak in the AGM. However, despite the hard work and initiative, she didn’t win any post at all.
Ju Meng wasn’t on his top performance today. For years, he had been bombarding tough questions to every candidate during the AGM. He was sitting behind me throughout the AGM and I found out that he prepares questions on his palmtop every time a candidate finishes his or her speech. He grins wickedly as soon as he finishes writing his question.
Frederick and Eng Keat on the other hand were on their top form today. They kept on bombarding questions to Derrick (one of the candidates running for President). Derrick had a hard time answering the questions. The actual purpose of bombarding Derrick was to clear the path for Jason, as he seemed to be one of the strong candidates.
The AGM ended in 3 hours time. Casting votes session was the final event and the results will be announced at Interval Bar. We were wondering whether Jason or Derrick would win the presidency. Before that, the committees bought couple of shots of liquor for the new committee members to down as soon as their names are announced. The sadistic committee bought at least 2 shots of hard liquor for the new committee to down (well not all but most of them).
And now, I’m in my room. I just spoke to the new President about the web page team and even suggested that we should have a Photo team (it was Frederick’s idea). The new president has very good social skills. He would listen to everyone’s opinion and agree on it without any buts and nos. Derrick Loh from Singapore beats Jason Kok by less than 10 votes to be our newest MASSOC President!
– 11:20PMDo some charity people!
http://www.mcdonalds.com.hk
– 2:00AM
Michelle’s Birthday 2002
Things haven’t been working well for me. Today, I bought a 5 satellites speaker for discounted price of £70. It sounds good and value for money but the only problem is my laptop doesn’t support it! The speaker requires 3 plug in sockets and all I have is just one. Therefore, only 2 of the satellites could run while the others doesn’t play at all because the cable couldn’t be plug into the laptop.
I went to Michelle’s birthday dinner at Orleans later at night. Her birthday is tomorrow but somehow we’re celebrating it today. Once again, the steak I ordered came out the way it wasn’t suppose to be. I ordered medium rare but instead they gave me an over cooked one. I complained to the waiter and all of a sudden, he ran to the other end of the table and got me a medium rare one. It was Frederick’s steak and it seemed that both of our steaks were given wrongly. To add insult to injury, Frederick eaten half of the steak already!
Many people turned out for Michelle’s dinner. 5 to 6 tables had to be combined to accommodate everybody. As usual, there were photo sessions, cake cutting and eating session and finally Michelle’s free shot of liquor. As usual again Michelle was in a state of comatose as soon as she arrived home.
– 11:59PM
Check out the new King Of Fighters 2002 videos! FUCKING ONZZ AHH!!
Mai Shiranui
Iori Yagami
Iori Yagami 2
For more videos go to http://allgames.online.sh.cn/kof/update/down/2002/9/9-7.htm
– 12:01AM
cactus!
I didn’t do anything particular today. It’s just like any other ordinary day, late for classes, being embarrassed in the Japanese classes and my weekly groceries shopping trip. While I was walking towards Somerfield (the grocery shop), I passed a flower shop. There was a stack of cactus plants lying on the ground selling for £1.99 each. I paused and took a look at it and said to myself, “hmm, getting a cactus for my room would be a good idea”. I picked a greenish cactus with no spiky thorns. It looked like a fat juicy cactus with fat thorns.
I use to have cactuses back in Malaysia. They don’t require much attention or care. All I need to do is just water them sometimes.
When I was in Primary school, one of my former tenants used to have a cactus. She named it “Serious” (I’ve no idea why people name their plants and I don’t intent to name mine). She gave the plant to me when she moved out from the house. However, after few months, it died. I was so scared that she would come back one day to take back the plant. Fortunately, I’ve never seen her ever since the day she left.
me and me cactus
– 10:45PM
Sunday basketball but missed muay thai!
ｻ For the first time, I skipped my Muay Thai classes. I was too lazy to do anything. However, I ended up playing basketball on the evening. hheh We played against 2 groups of Hongkies. The first group was not bad. We almost lost to their team but in the end, Jason, Su Fui, Alex and I managed to beat them. The second team was really good. We ended up losing to them. Their teamwork is much better than ours and our team is more of an individualistic team. Daniel, Siew Lee’s boyfriend (my housemate), is in Sheffield again. He’s having a one-week holiday. He accidentally sprained his ankle while playing basketball with us. Frederick has to send him to the hospital for a check up later at night. birmingham-motorshow-jamesbond.JPG – 6:30PM
– 11:20PM
ｻ Check out the new James Bond cars. Taken from the British International Motor Show yesterday.
birmingham-motorshow-jamesbond2.JPG
birmingham-motorshow-jamesbond-missles.JPG
birmingham-motorshow-jamesbond-cars.JPG
Birmingham
Frederick and I woke up extremely late. We were supposed start our journey to Birmingham at 8am. If it were not for Charles, we would be sleeping till late afternoon.
We took our sweet time, cooking, eating and even went online to check mails. We got out from the house at 11am and fetched one of Charles’s friends on the way.
The journey to Birmingham from Sheffield takes about 1 1/2 hour. I slept throughout the journey. zzzz
The British International Motor show is held in NEC Arena, Birmingham. That place reminds me of Hollywood studios with its huge geometrical buildings and small entrances. As usual, everything is expensive. The parking cost 8 quid, the entrance fee cost 15 quid and even the ice cream cost £1.30.
The Motor show consists of 5 huge halls and each hall has its own attraction. The new James Bond car, produced by Jaguar was on display on a frozen platform. There were 3 cars on display but only 2 of them has the James Bond equipment (ie missiles and machine guns) strapped on them.
I’m not a fan of cars. I can’t name any sport cars or whatever spare parts a car have. Attending the motor show was just an excuse not to stay home on a Saturday evening. I was bored throughout the whole day but kept myself entertained by taking pictures. Frederick, Charles and his friend were car fanatics. To them, the motor show was like heaven. They didn’t mind lining up to sit on the driver seat of the cars. And when they take photos of cars, they made sure that they took at least 2 or 3 picture of the same car.
The car fanatics complained that the Motor Show isn’t good enough. They were expecting heaps of concept cars but all they had was just couple of concept car and a lot of commercial cars. The motor shows seemed more like a market rather than an event of promoting the expression of idea and technology.
I was almost bored to death during the end of the evening until something happened. While Charles was looking at the Porsche cars, one of the lady staff asked whether did Charles like the car or not and soon a conversation started. I overheard their conversation and I decided to join in. She was telling us her experience in Malaysia. She got a friend who works for Malaysian Airlines and somehow she ended up ending seafood in Fatty Crab. She did all the talking, all we did was just laugh and comment a little bit. Suddenly, she invited us into the Porsche VIP lounge. Obviously, without hesitating, we gave us guest passes and the next thing we’re in the Porsche VIP lounge. Brilliant!
The VIP lounge consists of 4 Porsche on display and a small café upstairs. We couldn’t believe our fate that we are sitting on a Porsche alone and playing with its function. I immediately fell in love with Porsche. Its outer design is amazingly sleek and its interior, my god, its as if there’s a computer installed into car! It has a GPRS navigation function, SMS function, excellent sound system and so on.
We took pictures like mad despite that we’re they only young people around. The others seemed like middle-aged professionals.
The café was next. We rested in the café for an hour, drinking free juices and eating free food.
We finally left at 7pm as soon as the closing announcement was given. It seems that we spent 7 hours in the Motor Show today. I guess it was well worth our money.
– 11:00PMDownload Melbourne Shuffle ripped and coded by Wei Chen.
– 4:00AM
rainy city
I missed my 9am class this morning. Shit, it’s the second seminar I missed this time.
I’m going to Birmingham with Frederick and Charles tomorrow. Gonna take some pictures!
– 11:29PMCelebrating Halloween in the UK is a great experience. Even the television shows are affected. They were showing The Simpsons Halloween Special on TV and even Halloween Costumes dressed contestants in the Weakest Link.
I totally forgot that kids would be running around collecting candies on Halloween. I was cursing loudly when I heard the doorbell rang because the door wasn’t locked. As I open the door, I was surprised to see a kid wearing a witch costume screaming “trick or treat!”
I was totally unprepared for it and I combed the house for candies. I remembered that I still have some expired biscuits (they were really good biscuits but I couldn’t finish them) I gave the kid a whole bunch of it. Hope he wont get diarrhoea tomorrow.
Muay Thai classes will be held every Thursday starting from this week. The classes were full of people again (unlike Sunday classes, the class was virtually dead). The usual regulars returned. I partnered with Toby, the guy who I partnered last Sunday. He’s quite humble unlike some of the arrogant British I know. At the end of the night, we made a profit of 150 pounds. Scotty held a small meeting after the classes. Basically, it’s more of a Giles, Simon and Scotty meeting. Fiona and I never said anything. All we did was just nod and agree. Anyway, there wasn’t anything to disagree or talk about. Everything is running smoothly and we’re making a huge profit. I guess no one is complaining.
The Muay Thai Society held a small social at Cavendish again. Fiona and Scotty handed me 2 drink coupons. I got to drink 2 bottles of Vodka for free. However, the social wasn’t really great. It was just Fiona, Scotty and Giles. I didn’t see anyone from the club. Probably everyone had his or her own plans.
I left Cavendish after I finished my drinks and headed to Kingdom (club).
I didn’t dress up as anything this year (last year Khai Fei and I dressed up as the 2 Musketeers). But it seemed that almost everybody on the streets was wearing some costume. There was this guy who dressed up as Ali G and even acted like him. Another guy who painted himself green wore a ripped t-shirt. He looks exactly like the incredible hulk. Alex dressed up as a transvestite in Japanese kimono. He won the prize for guy’s best costume.
Kingdom is a shitty club. They play R&B music all night long. I stayed in the VIP room (MASSOC booked the VIP room for everybody), drinking free drinks (Chee Feng and Frederick bought me drinks), eating free food (MASSOC provided free food), took photos and chatted all night long.
The Chinese society joined the event as well. They purposely called MASSOC to book 50 tickets for its members.
I bumped into Choi Man (BBC from my Japanese class) and chatted with her for a while. We tried conversing in Japanese but it didn’t turn out well and we ended up speaking Cantonese. Apparently she knows David (another BBC who I bumped in Malaysia in a Pet Shop). Both of them are from Nottingham. What a small world!
Yong Chun, as usual, was drunk. He was running around kissing guys again. While his sidekick, Chee Ling was fine in the beginning. But after couple of hours, she started running around kissing girls.
Frederick dressed up as Obi Wan Kenobi and even borrowed a light sabre from Jonathan. Everybody was playing with the light sabre the whole night. There was this black guy who was telling me that in the US, there’s a light sabre that could be detached and assemble (??) and looks exactly like the one they had in the movies. I went like “oh really?, Oh I see?, Wow!” throughout the conversation. The fellow left as soon as he finishes his sentence. hehe
While Frederick and I were walking back to Frederick’s car, a group of British guys said. “hey is that Luke Skywalker? Is that Darth Vader? No! It’s Obiwan Kenobi!” And they started chanting “Obi Wan Kenobi, Obi Wan Kenobi, Obi Wan Kenobi” throughout the streets we were walking on.
It was a good night despite the lousy music. I don’t understand why people can dance to pop music with heavy bass. I spend the whole night talking to people and consequently got to know them better.
A great Halloween night!
– 7:25PM