Monday 4 August 2008

Updates

To make up for the lack of recent updates, here's a mini compilation of updates. Plus photos, some recent, some not so recent.

Sometime at the beginning of the year, went to that fish spa place in Pavillion just for the novelty of it. As you know, I'm ticklish, so to have hundreds of ikan bilis-esque fishes nibbling at the soles of my foot can be very unnerving. At the beginning it was pure torture, but towards the end of the 30 mins i kinda got used to it. At least i wasn't as bad as Sze Lyn, who upon first inserting her leg into the pool shrieked so loud that everyone turned to look at her. haha.


Went back to Cempaka twice so far, once to the Swimming Gala, recently to the Commencements dinner. Met some of my old teachers, and I'm surprised quite a few of them could remember my name, after almost 5 years (the same couldn't be said of Mel though, who's leaving after Form 4 meant she has faded her into obscurity. haha, i'm kidding. At least she got comments from teachers who she looks like a model now =).

All i've noticed is that the school has changed so much from my time. Everything now has stepped up a notch - from each student carrying a Mac to school everyday, Smart cards, quality iMovies, expeditions to places like Mt. Kinabalu / scuba diving. Their performances and talents are also a different class. They have top class performing arts teachers, and for example, to commemorate this year being their 25th anniversary they came up with 25 different versions of the school song - jazz, rock, blues, etc - imagine that! During her speech, Datin said she was going to do a "Mahatir" which turned out to be her announcement that she was stepping down as chairwoman of Cempaka Schools. All in all, an interesting visit back to the school. Didn't recognise a single person save for some juniors, and friend's siblings. Saw Kah Yat's brother, Natasha's sister, Sin Fee's sister, whom the last i remembered of them were just small kids, now they're all grown up (and looking remarkably like their elder sibling).

Spot our teachers



Also, I met up with long lost cempakans in Sky Bar about a week ago. Ppl like Therese, Tamara, Anita, Jin Rong, Jac Ying, Adrienne, Sing Ning, John Sng, Kah Yat, Gary, Steph, Jennifer, many of whom i haven't seen since Form 5. Good to meet up with everyone again.



Last Wednesday, went to watch the Chelsea vs. Malaysia friendly in Shah Alam stadium. which had almost a capacity crowd. Surprisingly, the Malaysian team really gave a really good fight. They had more than a couple of good chances to score goals, and it was a pity they were all spurned.



What else is there....

I've driven all the way to Singapore and back in less than 12 hours, just to drop my brother off.

I've been playing badminton a few times with Jeannie and Kee Win at the Taman Megah courts. Played badminton with Ashley last week (she's really good!). Also, Gary always bugs me to play tennis with him, so have been playing tennis every once in a while. Past weekend, the joker made me play tennis at midnight 2 days in a row. Futsal not as often, but all i can say is that it's very very tiring to play in the hot, humid (plus bad ventilation) courts here.

I've moved to a new house (just 2 mins from my old house), and the garden has a nice swath of grass to kick a football around, so what does an engineer do? He creates a nice little goalpost made from PVC pipes to aim at.
See the nice little goalpost

Watched Dark Knight recently with Jeannie. Good movie, but i don't think it's as great as it was hyped up to be. The Joker's performance was good at the same time disturbing - think "Why so srs?" whilst holding a knife at one's cheek + the pencil incident [I read an article which said that to prepare for his role, he stayed for one month in a hotel room by himself just psyching himself. Might explain how come he finally committed suicde]. It's been breaking record after record, and there's been talk that it might even surpass Titanic's US1.8 billion takings? It's to be seen if TDK can beat the buying power of 14 year old girls with a crush on Leonardo di Caprio watching Titanic countless times.

Read one of the 2 books Kee Win borrowed me, The Money Changers by Arthur Hailey, which is the first proper novel i've read in such a long time. Kee Win, interesting exposition of the world's financial system, but not really too much of an eye openeer.

Okays, i think that's enough for now. I should have updated more regularly instead of disappearing and then having a long post all at once.