Merry Christmas

Christmas is fast approaching, just a couple more days til the day when we celebrate joy, happiness and PRESENT.....yes, PRESENT.

I had a Christmas present exchanging with my classmates just now after our class. I was told rather last minute about the event...or whatever you wanna call it and have only one night to prepare a present to exchange.

So I went out to shop the night before purposely to buy the gift. The requirement for the gift was between RM10 - 20. Certainly, I had quite a lot of choices for something within that price range. But I wanted to get something presentable and not look too cheap....so I bought this

Famous Amos Cookies gift box....cute innit?

So I went to class just now satisfied with what i got, thinking it should be enough to impress my classmates. Only to my horror that their presents were way more impressive than mine....and a lot bigger, too.

My pressie was like an anchovy in a pond of sharks...

So the gift-exchanging proceed. I got a gift from this fella that I don't even remember what his name was. The gift was long and heavy, I suspected that it would be some kind of a bottled drink....wine maybe (for RM20?)


My intuition was half correct. It was a bottled drink, not wine though. It was a bottle of sparkling grape juice, and there was an added bonus. Two bars of Cadbury chocolate....how thoughtful. Looks like my Christmas is not going to be that bad after all.


And by the way, I got myself this baby while I was looking for the present. Hmm...talking about pampering myself....

Calvin Klein "Free" with after shave balm and body wash.
Merry Christmas folks....

2nd best.....again

I just spent my whole day playing in a football tournament today, which i didn't expect it to last that long. The tournament started around 8am and my team will only start to play around 8.45am. I was suppose to meet up with my team mates at 8am but i overslept myself, I'm gonna blame it on the alarm here. Luckily I managed to get there in time before our match start.


We lost our first match 3-0. A very bad start for us, maybe some of us haven't woke up from our dream yet.....including me. The pitch condition wasn't helping much either, it was rain soaked and we were like a bunch of buffalos playing in the mud.


We played much better in the second match, beating one of the favorite 1-0 courtesy of an own goal by one of their defender after being pressured by me into getting mixed up with his keeper....ehem ehem.

The third and final group match was a must win for us in order to get into the semi-final. After half an hour of hard work, we got the result we needed by beating the 'local' team 2-0 at their home ground.

This was our vice-captain trying to act cool.




Into the semi-final, we were pitted against a team which their players always played futsal with us on a weekly basis. In other words, we know this team well. Their results in the group stage surprised us, they won all their group matches convincingly. I think somehow they were a bit surprised as well. Against us somehow, their luck ran out. We marched on to the final after a hard fought 2-0 victory.

Condition of my boots after the tournament.

In the final we met with another 'local' team, and this team is a lot stronger than the first one. I came on as a second half substitute after i got a knock on my ankle during semi-final. After battling it out for 30 minutes, we were lucky to get away with a 0-0 draw. Penalty kicks then decides the champion.

We lost the penalty by a mere 5-4 margin and therefore can only settled for runner up....which was good enough considering it was an open tournament, and our team never really trained together as a team.


You might wonder why my post was titled "2nd best....again"? Cos this was like the third time I got a runner up for any football or futsal tournament. First time was back in KK when I was in my college football team playing in the intercollege tournament. Second one was in Miri competing in a Chinese futsal tournament. We didn't even expect ourselves to get this far in an open tournament. So, it was a great result for us.


Now, I'm suffering from sunburned and headache after almost whole day staying out under the sun and rain.....ugh.

2009 Year End Review (Jan - Jun)

Year 2009 is at its final month, the month of December, the month of holidays (not for me though), the time when you look back and think about what you have done for the past eleven months, the month to review all the highs and lows of 2009.
Overall, I had a very good year. I started the year in a great mood, knowing Chinese New Year was just around the corner. CNY is by far my favorite holiday.


January 2009 also happened to be the month when Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 1st African-American and 44th president of the United States. What an event to kick start the year.


Oh, lets not forget that we celebrated Ah Loong's birthday, too. And it was awesome....


January 2009 was just legen....wait for it....dary.

Coming into February and March, things started to slow down a bit. Cos it was time to concentrate on work work work....and study study study again.

Then April came, this year we celebrated another convocation ceremony of one of our LS gang member. Yes, it was our lovely Ms Micha's graduation ceremony this time. And of course, some of the gang members purposely drove down to Miri to congratulate her and to celebrate with her. Me on the other hand, was already here to welcome them.

Finally, out little Micha has graduated!!! It brought back a lot of memories of the time when they were all still in Curtin while they were here. They spent four days in Miri before heading back to KK.

Moving on to May 2009....
It was Labour Day, so my friends and I decided to spend our holiday in Brunei. We drove up the night before and stay overnight at my friend's sister's place at Kuala Belait. It was just about half an hour drive. Had a nice Thai dinner when we reached there.


The next morning we woke up early for a quick chinese breakfast nearby before heading to Bandar Seri Begawan. The dim sum there was tasteless, maybe it was because of the pork. Upon reaching BSB after about one and a half hour drive, we head straight for lunch as the breakfast we had was not so fulfilling.


Lunch was much much better compare to breakfast. It was a very famous chicken rice at Gadong area. After that we strolled at The Mall for about an hour before drove back to KB to shop for junk foods at our favorite Supasave Supermarket. Brunei trip won't be complete if you haven't enjoy your Japanese food at Excapade.


And that was what we had for dinner before rounding up our Brunei trip.

Another highlight for May 2009 would be the Miri International Jazz Festival, which was held annually at Parkcity Everly Hotel for two nights in a row.


A lineup of eight international Jazz bands gathered in Miri to entertain a sellout crowds from all across the world. Ticket cost us RM60 each for a single night.


The performances was inside The Pavilion ballroom. While outside at the hotel compound, there were souvenirs, foods and drinks to be sold....including beer. For those who doesn't want to get cramped inside the ballroom, they can just sit on the grass or the beach and have some foods while enjoying the show via a few big screens that the organizer set up outside. Overall, it was a nice event, except for the mosquito bites....or sand fly.

Towards the end of the month, I went to Brunei once again. This time I brought along two visiting friends from KK. Apart from the eating and shopping for junk foods, we also happened to visit the majestic mosque in Brunei and walk around inside the luxury Empire Hotel and Resort.


There was another road trip on June 2009. This time instead of goin' to Brunei, we head south to Bintulu. Journey there took about two to three hours. It was my first time to Bintulu, a small town with lots of old buildings. It was like a sight seeing trip more than anything else. Cos if talking about food, I think Miri has more to offer.


Places that we visited includes public toilet with a cool grafiti on its wall, a temple in the middle of the town, Bintulu beach and of course Taman Tumbina Bintulu. It was like a small park cum mini zoo. They was a tiger in there, but we didn't get to take a picture of it cos it was too lazy to move around it's cage, which was quite big with lots of trees.


We stayed there until around 2pm before driving back to Miri. And that wraps up some of my activities for the first half of the year.
To be continue...