Bittersweet Symphony

Yay! I've officially survived my first week in the uni that I love oh so much (can you taste the sarcasm?). The past week was busy busy busy. We had to fight for the lectures and tutorials that we wanted (so that our fridays are free of course), buy books and notes and on top of that I was involved in an event called Symphonyfest.

Symphonyfest is like a day for anyone who play or appreciate music to gather and have fun. It was a one day event but I was too tired to go for the morning session so I only went for the night performances and boy were they good. The classical and jazz orchestra, indian orchestra and chinese orchestra accompanied by the uni's choir members opened the show and they were totally awesome seeing that most of them only had a week to practise. The only down side was the choir's choice of song which was Belaian Jiwa and Warisan, too common for my taste.

But the performance that I was really looking forward to was by the gamelan group and they definitely did not dissapoint me. They totally rocked the night! The music that they played was so hypnotizing and by the end of the night I had convinced myself to learn to play an instrument (I think everyone who went left feeling like that ahhaha). Watching them play made me a little jealous that they have that talent. I definitely regret not learning to play an instrument when I was younger, sigh. But its ok my friend promised to teach me how to play drums and I'm now enrolled in gamelan ii so at least I'm making some progress, right?

After the students finished showing their talents and proving to people that we can also rock in music eventhough we are an engineering and technology university, the stage was given to two local artists, Cheryl Samad and Altimet. Cheryl opened with a big thank you for inviting her 'all the way' to tronoh (thats where the uni is located, fyi) which had the audience laughing cos we know that tronoh is like in the middle of nowhere but she thought that we were laughing cos she got the name wrong so that was pretty funny. Aaanyways they were actually here to promote their first albums respectively and sang a few songs for us. And honestly they were not bad. So support local artist yo!

The event ended at around 11.30 and I was suppose to stay for post event briefing till 2am so obviously I bailed and instead followed my friends out to mamak muahaha. Well here are some photos I took with my phone (which would explain the quality)

All rise!

Gamelan Group

Choir singing Jalur Gemilang accompanied by CNJ

Chinese Orchestra

The day will come...

Song of the moment : The Vines - Homesick

Hole

Someone pointed out to me that I let people take advantage of me. That I put more into a relationship than the other person. I laughed and told her that it was completely untrue. Then she went on and list a few examples. But I didnt see those actions as them stepping over my head at all. I did them because they're my friends. Because friends are very important to me. Besides what's wrong with helping a friend in need? She answered, "when the said friend would not do the same thing for you".

Song of the moment : Elliot Smith - Between the Bars

Globes and Maps

Friday, 29/06/2007
8.30am - 2.00pm
- Sieutheng and I arrived way too early at KL sentral (which was a good thing cos we ended up buying a map of Perak which helped us a LOT, trust me)
- at around 10 the rest of the roadtrip people started to arrive. had breakfast at McD and we were on our way
- first mission: squeezing 8 people with their luggages into an avanza that doesnt have a boot. Mission status : success
- second mission: finding a way out of kl and on to the highway. mission status : failed
- so there we were wandering around KL for half an hour until we finally managed to get on to the highway
- stopped at sg buloh at waited for darrens car
- once they arrived we delegated ourselves and headed towards bidor

avanza : jinz, me, fred, kok ket, rudy, ben, justin

darrens car : darren, josephine, christine, bev, sieutheng, sue ling
luggages : darrens car


2.00pm - 5.30pm
- according to darren he was going 80-90 km/h. the avanza was going 100-110 km/h but we didnt manage to catch up and instead held up the traffic ahhaha

- finally we arrived at bidor for lunch at the famous wantan shop
- we then decided to go to pasir salak to refresh our sejarah and also to re-enact the scene where jww birch got murdered
- with only a map to guide us we headed towards pasir salak (which turns out to be way off course but thats the point of a roadtrip rite)

- after about an hour plus of driving and making wrong turning and taking picture with durian and kelapa in the middle of the road and acting like a complete tourist we managed to find ourselves at the Pasir Salak Historical complex.
- we arrived at 4.25 and the complex was closing at 4.30 (great timing right?) aaanyways we walked around a bit, learned a few things, took photos and we were back on the road
- by this time everyone was so tired so we decided to head straight to penang

Somebody looks bored...

5.30pm - 8.30pm
- first thing we needed to do was find a way out of this place. ahhaha easier said that done even with a map.
- but we managed and after a long time soon we were back on the highway
- then it was just driving all the way

most of the time this was the car arrangement
avanza (the happening car ahhaha) : jinz, me, fred, kok ket, sieutheng, christine, ben, justin
darrens car : darren, josephine, bev, rudy, sue ling

8.30pm - 12.00am
- we're in Penang baby!
- paid the toll to get on penang bridge. 15 minutes later we're still not on the bridge eventhough its only 1km away from us (jam giler). justin who was excited at first since he has not been on the bridge before grew tired and kept asking his famous question "are we there yet?"

- finally we were on the bridge and everyone was hungry so we went to pulau tikus for dinner/supper
- they had char kuey teow while I had McDonalds ahhaha
- we sent josephine home and did a little snooping and had interesting conversation in the car while we got lost yet again
- finally arrived at the apartment at 12.02 am

Saturday, 30/06/2007
10.30am - 7.30pm
- everyone started waking up except for freddy who needed extra help to wake up ahhaha

- got ready and went to pick josephine up
- then with the help of a map we headed towards chulia street for their famous chicken rice
- after that we walked i repeat we walked under the hot sun towards jalan penang for their famous cendol and asam laksa but since everyone was full we only had cendol
- then we walked back to the car but not before stopping at 7-11 to cooldown our body (i think we stopped at the 7-11 three times and didnt buy anything)
- next destination : batu ferringhi baby! but first we needed to look at our map to see where it is ahhaha

- we arrived at the beach and in just a few minutes some of us decided to go parasailing (the most spontaneous descision made on the trip)
- then of course the most unforgettable moment of the trip happened. keyword : vomit. but names wont be mentioned to protect the said person ahhaha

- did a lot of camwhoring on the beach

- later headed back towards the apartment using a very winding road up and down the hill which caused the said person above and another one to get very sick.
- an hour later we arrived at the apartment where everyone cleaned up to go for dinner

9.30pm - 2.00am
- went out for dinner on macallister road
- had char kuey teow and oh jien overdose
- managed to get lost again (we got used to it)
- stopped at 7-11 to purchased what would turned up to be later named Peanut Butter Dip

- arrived at the apartment at 2am. the longest dinner we ever had.

Sunday, 1/07/2007
10.30am - 2.00pm
- everyone started waking up except for freddy, again
- we cleaned the house, packed our stuff and said goodbye

- we then went to lorong selamat to eat char kuey teow and oh jien again!
- after that at around 4 or 5 we made our way to the ferry. at this moment ben was doing the driving and for the first time justin wore his seatbelt ahhaha just kidding ben, you were a good driver.

- camwhoring again on the ferry and said goodbye to penang
- we managed to stop at 3 out of 3 stops along the way and even visited an arowana farm (totally random)
- then it was just driving all the way. and we changed drivers a few times so that everyone gets a chance to drive(note: the scarriest driver was justin cos he would always drive at 130km/h eventhough the limit was 110 km/h)
- while justin was driving we got caught in this huge jam before rawang so with nothing better to do we played truth or dare which later changed into dare or dare. the dares would not be mentioned here due to explicit reasons ahhaha. lets just say peanut butter, licking and body parts were involved. the rest is up to your imagination.

one of the dares

- around 11.00 we finally arrived in KL and we had dinner at where it all started, Stevens Corner.

Song of the moment : Landon Pigg - Keep Looking Up