Bangkok

i was in bangkok last month for a work related conference and it was great, getting to meet a couple of interesting people!

upon reaching my room just after checking in, i see my name on tv. WOOHOO!! sorry i jakun lar. such things have never happened to me before! LOL
with Pearly and our 'colleagues' from Singapore. though our company has a few branches over Asia Pac, this was my very first time meeting them. the dinner place the organizers brought us to the first night. interesting eh??? wait till u see the next following pictures. hehe
meet C-Man!! haha. ok, i'm not going to outrightly say what this C-Man is made of and why i named him as such so just take a closer look. :P

unique concept of lights!
and its never too late for christmas!
oh no! the C-word is out in the open! hehe nice tagline..
pearly so wanted her coconuts (hmm, didn't sound quite right..) and we got it before dinner on the 2nd day
one group pic! look, the females were clearly outnumbered.
with Pearly and Michael from Philippines. very nice and friendly guy ( in case he sees this! :P )who I'm still chatting with on msn now. why, after working hours of course! haha..

with the korean guys who we went out drinks with. it was nice talking bout our country ( though i don't think i make a very good rep! ) and hearing bout theirs. shucks, one leng chai korean didn't make it to this pic lar.and the cutest comment from them was when they said i looked like a korean??!! -.-
we managed to shop in chatuchak a bit before leaving and man was the place crazy!!!! look at all the cars parked! and this was only one portion of it..it was so hot and so crowded up till i was a bit lost? its like buy only lar!!! don't care!! just buy!! so hot! so many ppl shoving and pushing! just get it!! don't think anymore!! haha.. imagine, when i came back, i die die needed to shower even though we were running late before heading to the airport. me? yuenwei? insisting to shower? those who know me well would know that i think bathing is a waste of time. haha...
so what do i think of bangkok?? i'd prefer bali anytime!!!! ehehe...

Do you want to feel wonderful? Think wonderful. Don't assume that once certain hoped-for and anticipated results are achieved, the wonderful feeling will follow. That's a big lie. Positive thoughts and feelings are not the result of positive results. They are the cause.

-Success by Design-

borders..

I recently kick started a small fund raising project in my company in conjuction with the Gift of Hope program organized by World Vision Malaysia. It's a program where we can donate an amount of my money to buying school bags for the kids in India, a goat for the community in Vietnam or a warm meal to the orang aslis in Sabah. (you can read more about it at http://www.worldvision.com.my/) Suggesting to do something like this is a great deal for me in itself and I almost chicken-ed out when it came to rolling out the project. Really, what am I expecting out of this? Hundreds? Thousands? Are my colleagues even gonna be receptive to drop their money into that pathetic makeshift donation box of mine?

A close friend have always given me flak when I talk about adopting a child through WV. "Why must adopt a child there? Here no needy kids meh?" he questions. Regrettably, I don't remember giving him anything to chew on cos all I answered him was my default "stupid" reply.

So it didn't come as a surprise to me when another brought up a similar question when I asked him to donate the other day (he had to ask this question next to close friend, so close friend was having a smirk by now). I was so kan cheong to answer because I had all the answers in my head already (due to past experiences) that it was painful to wait for him to finish his question! A smile begin to form on my face. After all that wasted chances, this is my tipping point! (haha..) I'm all ready to fire now!! But due to my enthusiasm to answer 'correctly', I guess I appeared a wee bit too defensive to prove any point.

There is no denying that the need is great here as compared to our neighbouring countries. I'm not even gonna talk about who needs it most.(well, generally they have it worse than us lor). What I'm hoping to get across is that you'd find different people with passion for different causes. It can be for the terry fox run, for a women support group, for local orphans, for a cancer foundation, for the whales or rhinos, but there's no saying to who is fighting a more worthy cause. All are equally important. Without these variety of people, you'd get a lopsided support for one particular movement while the rest are neglected. You should know by now that no man can serve all (hmm..except God la).

I don't want to limit myself only to my fellow Malaysians (having said that, you can bet that I'd gladly offer my help whenever I can). As a matter of fact, I don't want to limit myself to race, religion or nationality. My community is the locals here in the state I'm living in, the people in satay-celup land, across the sea to the East Coast, up the borders to Thailand, or India, or wherever I feel burdened to help. At the end of the day, I'm just trying to do my bit and as a group, we can do more! Remember, people power? (i just have to lar!..hahha..)

taiwan - touch your heart.

was their tourism tagline. hmm, but i wasn't touched at all lor! haha... maybe because i'd rather a beachy place for a holiday rather than a city. :P


the whacky bunch of colleagues.

this was one of the places we had our supper when we went scouring the streets. the food was good up until the moment we were walking out of the place, we saw the lady washing the vege with either soap or detergent!!!! and that too on the floor!!!!!! i tell you, it didn't take even a second for our faces to change.


i am promoting taiwan well, arent i? haha..


the cart stalls i was talking about in my previous post. plenty in taiwan.
on the lovers' bridge with terrina, sharon and catherine.
we meet this couple and their dog on the 2nd day, at the hotspring place 2 hrs from the city of taipei. the next day while we were shopping in shilin market, in taipei itself, we saw them again! what coincidence! the first thing that caught my eye was the dog and i was thinking to myself that this chinese shar-pei must be famous in taiwan cos i've seen 2 of them in 2 days already. mana tahu its the same one!
the lovers' bridge again and no idea why it's named as such. i blame it on the tour guide for the lack of information.
at one of the streets, shopping. for us, once it drizzles we'd cabut rite? but they instead, whipped out their umbrellas and continued shopping!

welcome to taiwan...

a couple of weeks back, we went to taipei for our company trip... it was good, except for the tour meals that were the same for 3 consecutive days! imagine eating the same dishes for 5 meals??

voon, bryan and myself after 4 hrs of shopping at the shilin night market. it was crazy packed! legs were killing me..
we touched down the airport about 8ish, by the time we reached the hotel it was about 10ish. we hit the streets right after that, not wanting to waste any more time. we got a lil bit excited trying out what taiwan's famous for, which is their food stalls along the street, buying and eating anything interesting we saw! we reached this famous mee place, where you have to stand and makan. so as you can see on the pic, everyone was just standing around holding a bowl of mee soup.


this is the other part of the shilin market. one area's for shopping and the other is to eat. after walking for 4 hrs, seeing chairs is like paradise! as we sat down one by one, you could actually hear our happy sighs! tried a couple of the taiwan must try; one of which is their 'oh-chien'. looks and tastes a lot like ours, except its a lil bit more starchy.

one of the days, a couple of us ditched the tour to go to the IT mall in true nerd style. we took the train and it is obvious where we took this pic.
we pakat-ed to wear something chinese-y on our chap goh meh dinner and here we are showing off our wong-fei-hung skills.

erm. we were at some rock formation place.

see. face of a princess. and caryn, voon, eric and myself.

shilin

and bryan with his erm what-do-you-call-those?...tomatoes wrapped in sugar.