Earthquake 30 Sept 2009

I was still in the office around 6.15pm yesterday with 3-4 colleagues when I felt the tremors the first time. I thought I was probably dizzy because I was having a headache due to exposure to the sun and I was fasting sunat Syawal, so I thought it was just me feeling malnourished. My chair was shaking and I thought it was the wheels moving. Then I got up to make sure that either I was dizzy or the building was moving and said to no one in particular, "Is it just me or is the building moving?". Assured nothing happened, I sat down and continued iwth my emails. Then Tasha came and asked me if I felt the building moved, and I said yes, I thought it was just my imagination, and then wham! Both of us felt the tremors again, this time around more visible than the last because we were aware of it and we saw the leaves of the office plants moving. I said to Tasha let's get out of the office, now! We switched off our PCs and collected our bags and quickly went to the lift, praying that there won't be any tremors. A lot of things were playing in my minds, would I make it out alive? would there be any more tremors? I was scared. The elevator came soon enough and it was packed with people. I met En Wan, one of the Directors and asked him if he had felt the trmors, and like me he said, I was having a headache and I thought that was it. Alhamdullillah we reached the lobby without any incident. Later on, I heard on the radio, an earthquake had hit Sumatra with 7.7 richter scale and its tremors were felt in Malaysia, including Angkasapuri. Tsunami alert for Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.

Lets pray for the victims of the earthquake in West Sumatra and the tsunami victims in Samoa.

Tunai, Touch 'n' go & Smartag: Mana Satu Pilihan Anda?

Ketika umat Islam di Malaysia sibuk ziarah-menziarahi saudara-mara di kampung sempena menyambut Aidilfitri, kita semua tak boleh lari dengan kesesakan lalulintas dimana-mana saja. MRR2 ke, Jalan kampung ker, highway ker. Terutamanya di highway. Tp ada pilihan, kalau nak cepat gunakan laluan fast track Smartag atau Touch 'n' go. Kalau tiada kedua-duanya, maka terpaksalah gunakan lorong tunai yang queue nya panjang berjela-jela. Saya terdengar komen hamba Allah mengatakan bahawa lorong Smartag ini untuk orang kaya-kaya sahaja, dan kerajaan tidak telus dalam pembahagian sama rata untuk kemudahan pembayaran tol. Yang ironiknya, hamba Allah ini mempunyai Smartag! Ada pulak komen tambahan yang mengatakan tunggulah kerajaan yang baru...?! (wtf??)

Saya tak suka berpoliticking di dalam blog yang tak seberapa ini, tetapi saya terpanggil jugak untuk komen pernyataan di atas kerana saya merasakan ianya sungguh kontradik. Kemudahan Smartag itu kesan dari kapitalisme, siapa yang kaya atau ada duit lebih dan bencikan queue yang panjang, boleh gunakan lorong tersebut. Ada juga guna Smartag sebab mereka dah plan perjalanan mereka dengan baik. Ini pemandu yang bijak, takder kena mengena dengan kerajaan sekarang atau yang akan datang. Pendapat saya, sesiapa yang gunakan lorong tunai pada masa perayaan atau cuti sekolah, memang tidak bijak sebab mereka dah tau queue akan menjadi panjang dan mereka masih tidak merancang perjalanan. Kalau tak mampu beli smartag, pakailah touch 'n' go. Bukannya mahal sangat, RM 10 pun dh boleh dapatkan satu kad. Kalau nak berjalan jauh, segeralah top-up di kaunter tol atau di mesin ATM. Sekarang ni Smartag dan touch 'n' go bukannya satu kemewahan, malah satu keperluan.

Semua kemudahan dah ada, anda buatlah pilihan yang terbaik untuk diri dan keluarga anda. Kalau tak kisah beratur panjang sekali-sekala, apa salahnya gunakan lorong tunai Tp kalau anda tak suka kesesakan macam saya, gunakanlah smartag atau touch 'n' go. Senanag cakap, ini pilihan peribadi (its a matter of choice). Bukannya nak menyalahkan kerajaan sekarang atau yang akan datang, tak kisahlan kerajaan yang mana pun. Kalau nak komen pasal kerajaan tak adil, janganlah kemudahan smartag dipersalahkan. Kalau semua orang haknya sama rata, baik kita jadi negara komunis, macam China. Itupun saya perhatikan semasa di sana jurang kekayaan besar, tak jugak sama rata. Mana ada benda yang adil dalam dunia ini. Allah sahaja yang adil!!!

P/S: Aku pun golongan marhaen, tetapi pengguna jalan yang bijak sebab ada Touch 'n' go.

Disclaimer: Posting ini bukan tujuan untuk mengiklankan Smartag atau Touch 'n' go, tetapi menyedarkan betapa pentingnya untuk merancang perjalanan anda.

Eid Ul Fitri Mubarak

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Maaf Zahir dan Batin kepada semua...
Jangan terlebih makan ketupat/rendang/lemang/lontong..nanti sakit perut..
Berhati-hati di jalanraya ketika balik kampung/pergi beraya...
kecelakaan boleh menimpa di mana2 sahaja...

Happy Birthday kepada Kak Shira, ibu kepada tiga anak, bakal calon Phd, kawan sekolah dan geng Taekwondo masa zaman Uni. Mudahan persahabatan kita kekal sepanjnag hayat walaupun kita semua dah sibuk dengan kehidupan masing2.

Beijing Express Sightseeing: Great Wall of China

I only had just the Friday after finishing the tradeshow and seminar on Thursday. So I had decided to do express sightseeing to the Great Wall, Forbidden City and Tian An Men Square. Morning we started our journey at 8am. I was joined by Peter the tour guide, a surly lady driver and May from Sunway Resort.

Great Wall is about 60km from Beijing, a journey which took about one and half hours drive because of the traffic. Traffic is quite bad in Beijing but it is moving traffic, plus Beijing have four ring roads, which all roads will take you about half an hour to go to any main area of Beijing.

Gondola at Badaling which costs RMB60 (about RM30)

We went to one of the nearer Great Wall entrance, the North Pass which is called Badaling, which literally means "arriving from everywhere", or so I was told. The walls were built such that people can arrive at the 8th tower from any direction. This entrance was the most popular and visited by most tourists, apart from Mutianyu or the Southeast pass. The Great Wall was built from the 5th Century, most famous when China's first emperor, Emperor Qin built it, continued by the Ming Dynasty. It was built as a fortification of the emperor's new frontier and against invasion from the North and Mongolia.

Gondola ride up to the 8th tower, much like the gondola going up to Genting

The 7th tower on the top was cut off by the huge mountain stone, so they built another way at the side for people to access. Below left is the 6th tower and front is the foot of the 7th tower

The climb to 8th tower starts from here

Fortunately the weather was cool, I guess about 15-17 degrees. I was fasting but I was determined to climb to the top to reach the 8th tower. We began climbing at the foot of the 7th tower, at first it was kind of easy because it wasn't slanting till we reach half of the way and it began to become very steep and angle is about 70-80 degrees...scary!

Going up...up

See the angle up? My guestimate it's about 70 degrees angle

I made it!!! The 8th tower at the backNow...how to go down eh? Very steep!!The Great Wall branching out to many different directions

Coming up, Beijing Express Sightseeing: Forbidden City & Tian An Men. Also, Beijing's handiwork.

Work@Beijing

6 Sept 2009, D-Day: 2200 hours at McDonalds' KLIA

I just came back from Beijing last Saturday. This week has been crazy, didn't have time to update sooner on my trip to Beijing. But the week before departure was the craziest, I had only 3 days to prepare for my traveling arrangements - express visa from the China Embassy (cost RM130), my flight ticket, my hand-carry items - 14 boxes containing promotional items and one clothes bag that I checked in which totaled 174kgs! Lucky I got a warrant. Phew...

This trip had me worried for so many reasons:
1. I had so little time to mentally prepare myself for the appointments and other work entails;
2. I was traveling alone for the first time, but still lucky that I have colleagues to wait for me at the other end;
3. and the current health situation with H1N1, naturally going to China had me worried eventhough there were no death reported.

Hence, the mask. Mak and Ayah advised me to wear the mask, which I did. And throughout the 6 hours flight. I was the only one wearing the mask in business class. Well, better a freak than dead because a passenger had some kind of flu and I got paranoid. However, once arrived I noticed that only the Immigration people wore masks. But in Beijing, nobody wore masks. Even in the newspapers, H1N1 was not yet a cause for concern because it only attack the rural area and mostly in schools. It was almost unheard of in Beijing, people weren't concerned. Plus, China was to produce its own antidote. So, China boleh!

After about half an hour's drive, I arrived at the Chaoyang area. It is not exactly the city centre but its the area where Tourism Malaysia and the Embassy of Malaysia is located. I checked in at the Westin Chaoyang Beijing. Awesome room! Includes Osim foot massager and a nice view of the city.

King sized bedView on the other side of the room. Some of the boxes I carried on left side of the room

The Osim foot massager...ahhh

See thru shower stall, people from the opposite building can see me shower. Lucky I realized in time that I need to push the automatic button for shutter down for complete privacy!

Next day I head on to China National Convention Centre, the venue of the tradeshow. The CNCC is located nearby the Bird's Nest Stadium, where China had the opening for the Olympic 2008. Basically I had to take care of the booth and attend appointments normally with travel agents or meeting planners, advertising houses (more for soliciting ads space), and some trade visitors.

Bird's Nest stadium BeijingIn front of the CNCC

Malaysia booth at the show, back viewKorea Sparkling was our neighbour booth

I love Thailand's booth because of its simplicity and cute signage and ultra-cool lamps
Beijing's booth was the biggest, this is only half size Phillippines booth

Incidentally, Malaysia just won the best short haul destination as voted by TravelWeekly. We were against Philippines' Cebu and Boracay as well as Japan. So, Malaysia Boleh!

New Recruits Reporting for Duty, Sir!

So yesterday, 1 September 2009, was the day that me and Shasha were required to report to our new boss, ZHS. Despite protests from Bonda in the way of request to defer me from going to MYCEB for at least another month, the powers that be still requires me to go and report duty till further notice comes. So I met ZHS, MD of MYCEB. Nothing new there. In fact, it was like going home. I was in familiar territory. Except that there's a bit of power play with Bonda. Hopefully, that will work out soon. I don't want to feel guilt for wanting to do something that I think I'm good at. Plus, tonnes of things to do already. MYCEB still have a lot of unresolved issues like office space, staffing, SOP, etc. So, we'll take it one step at a time. Oh, I was requested by ZHS to go to Beijing next week to attend a tradeshow. So last minute, need to have permission for travelling, visa to China, book accommodation, etc etc. See how it goes

p/s: Life will be like a rollercoster with MYCEB from now on...