Function

As some of you might know (and most of you might not know), I played for a band mainly for function like weddings. And this is my extra-curricular activities which then will be written in my real life report card.

It was a bit of wrong timing to be in Japan in school holidays last time. We missed out 4 offers for wedding ceremony. So, as now I am back, we got another offer. But this time not a wedding ceremony. I was not clear what event it will be, but as inform, as usual, they need songs that they can dance with. So, this is what I call "Lagu Carik Makan!".

2 month in Japan makes me loose some of my skills as a guitarist. I can't play as good as I was last time. Especially when it comes to songs like 60's, joget, dangdut and old malay rock. My taste on music; i.e. the music I listen to everyday is totally opposite with the songs I had to play, and it makes things worst where I could not recall some of the arrangement of the songs. But all this songs aren't bad at all. I did enjoy playing some of the songs.

The next function will be on 20th January, and I have to prepare to play some dangdut and joget songs. To get my feet back into this scene, I need to listen back to most of the songs and practice. The problem is, I can hardly find some of the song as they are very rare and nobody convert the materials to digital form. Of course they provide me with cassette, but it is very difficult with my situation. All my cassette player, including walkman and recorder already broken. With this modern technology of digital music, who need the cassette player? I used to think so, and now I am totally wrong on that thought. But I wont waste my money to buy a cassette player just to listen to some of the cassette they provide me.

Long Holiday for New Year

In case you didn't know, the company gave us a long holiday until next Thursday. So, after I came back, working for 3 days, then I continue my holiday and next Friday will be the beginning of the new chapter of my career.

When talking about new year, most famous question of all time is "What's your new year resolution?"
Mine? - So if you want to know my new year resolution, I wanted to be successful in my career, as well as investment. So far I got a good return on my investment. I gain few thousand ringgit last year (most of them are paper gain!) I would love to invest more and as the forecast, year 2008 the market will be fluctuated. So, perhaps I must study some strategy on how to tackle this situation in order for me to benefit every up and down market.

Enough talking on new year resolution and investment thing. So what happened during my long holiday? So, last Tuesday I went back to my dad house in Kluang, but on the way there I make a brief stop at Batu Pahat. Kak Liza told me earlier, if I went to Batu Pahat, she would bring me to some Japanese Restaurant (after noticing how I like Japanese food). So Kak Liza, her son Ucop and me begin the journey of hunting for food around 3.00pm. I just realized that Batu Pahat have a lot of Restaurant serving the Japanese food. But, the luck is not at our side, the timing wasn't right. Most of them only served Japanese food after 6.30pm. After went back and forth, we end up at Sushi King - the final hope for Japanese food.So I ate the chicken (sorry, I really forget the name). This dish taste really good. (Credit to Kak Liza for 'belanja'ing me. For others, please make your offer in any other time!). I didn't eat much sushi as I saw a lot of merepek type of sushi on the conveyour.

I ate this sushi almost everyday for my dinner while staying in Kawasaki.

Before I went to Japan, i thought it was easy to find food such as sushi around Malaysia. They were sold everywhere especially in the supermarket. But after I returned back here, I slightly changed my mind. They did sold them everywhere, but the taste are different and the originality also distorted. They totally improvised it. Earlier today, I went to Carrefour and bought some sushi. Where else in the world can you find sushi with sambal? Furthermore, I was a little bit regret with the taste. Not as good as Japanese sushi. So, from my story above, you can make the conclusion yourself. And I totally believed the same thing will happened if you find mat salleh selling nasi lemak in the U.K. You can imagine how to feel eating nasi lemak with sausage or ham.

Happy New Year 2008

So this is my first date... sorry, my first update ever since I'm back from Japan. It's good to be back here in Malaysia. As the old folk said,

Hujan Emas di Negeri Orang, Hujan Batu di Negeri Sendiri

Even hujan batu di negeri sendiri, negeri sendiri will always be better than any other place.

I'm taking this opportunity to wish all of you who dropped by my page for a Happy New Year 2008. Time just won't stop ticking and I am getting older day by day. This may means I am more matured than last year, this also means the death is getting nearer...

Yesterday I just registered a Celcom 3G broadband and FYI I am posting this blog using this 3G connection. So, why the hell did I choose this Celcom 3G? Why not Maxis 3G? (For those who didn't know, I'm using Maxis for my handphone line.) and why not TMNet Streamyx??? Ok, I got a few reasons here:

1. Reasonable price - RM68 per month for 3G connection. I didn't register for 3Gx (or 3.5G) which is offered at RM98 per month because there is no coverage in Muar. If I'm staying in Melaka or KL, then I might consider.
2. No contract period - I can terminate whenever I like. Unlike other providers, for example Streamyx. Even they have the promotion of RM77 for 1GB connection, I have to stick with the contract of 2 years. If I were having a baby, I bet he/she might know how to walk at that period of time.
3. Muar is in coverage - When Maxis put their effort for a better services, they forgot to consider the coverage. Muar only have Edge connectivity for Maxis.
4. Mobility - I can online anywhere, as long as there is a network coverage for Celcom. Unlike Streamyx. I have to stick my butt in my room if I wish to online.

I see first the performance of this connection. So far, it was OK. Not very impressive but at least I can online and download at home. No need to go to CC to update some files inside my laptop. Thanks to the technology. Technology indeed makes our life easier!

Good Bye Osaka!

And now, the end is near.
And so I face the final curtain...

Training in Osaka almost reached it's end. So far, I didn't update a lot since the nihon-go class started. しゅくだいたくさんありますから。There is a lot of homework given by sensei. Ok... I know, that is just another reason. The fact is I felt like time is moving faster than ever. 3 weeks almost past in this beautiful city of Osaka.

So far, I still can't speak proper Japanese. My vocabulary is still under average, under my expectation. But from this training I gain a lot of knowledge, including the sentence structure, the grammar and the language behaviour. It's a great start for me on this new language.

Besides the language, the most important things I learned here is about Japanese characteristics. Sensei always tell us about the Japanese characteristics and culture including the history. So, we might know why is this so, and why is that so. Both of our sensei have done their job very well in educating us. Special thanks to them.



I didn't have the chance to visit most of the exciting place around here. The only place I went is Namba, Nipponbashi, Universal Studio Japan and Osaka Castle. I couldn't allocate time to visit Kobe (the romantic city?) and Kyoto (the previous capital of Japan for more than 1200 years). Maybe I'll make another trip in one of these days.

USJ... in Malaysia, when one pronounce USJ, the first thing in mind is the 'Ulu Subang Jaya'. But in Japan especially Osaka, USJ is well known as the famous entertainment center - Universal Studio Japan. Once I put on my foot into this wonderful piece of land, I felt like I was in the USA with all the atmosphere is American style. The songs, the buildings, the sign on the road etc etc. From testimonials, most of them saying that USJ is better than Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea. I didn't went to Disneyland, so I could not compare. But to be honest, it was really worth to give a visit to this USJ even the entrance fee could suck up the money inside your wallet.

So, tomorrow I will coming back to Kawasaki before I return back to Malaysia.
Good bye Osaka! さよなら　大阪！
Wish you the best of luck!

Nihon-go Benkyo o shimasu

How's Osaka?
It was great to be here. So, the training was fun, yet challenging.
Lately I can hardly spare-off some time to update my blog due to many homeworks given by sensei.

The weather here is a little bit cold. Colder than Kawasaki. Not because the temperature, but our training center is just next to the sea. You'll have some idea when you watch the map down there. The red circle is the Cosmosquare, where I am now. It can be consider as an island (I guess), in the middle of the bay. So, can you imagine how you feel when the wind blew in a cold day?


After completed the first training of Japanese Culture, we continue with the second training. For this time it is the language training. The Japanese Language or Nihon-go.

So, this is the book that provided by the training committee. "Japanese For Busy People" by AJALT. This is a good book to learn, with examples and exercises. Amazingly, we have finished almost half of the book in 4 days. It was a bit fast for me, but it was the only way to finish this book by the time the training ends.

Studying a foreign language is not an easy thing compare to our mother language. When we start to study a foreign language, we started to compare the grammar and the structure of the sentence with other language that we'd already master. That's make the process even harder.

Japanese language has alot of difficult point. Here I list some of them which I have found in this 4 days lesson:
1. The particles is always confusing. Too many of them and all of them are critically important. Words such as wa, no, ka, o, mo, de, to, ni, yo and so-on and so-forth.
2. The politeness levels. Depending on situation, one must use a different kind of expression, and words must be choose wisely. For example for the words 'sorry' the hierarchy is as follows: Gomen, gomenasai, sumimasen, moshi waki arimasen, moshi wake gozaimasen.
So, when we go to exclusive restaurant, the words level will be different compare to McDonalds.
Besides, for male and female, there are different kind of words to be used. Example: Female - watashi, male: boku.
3. 3 types of writing. Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. I think only nihon-go have this 3 kind of writing which is mixed in a sentence. Malay people may have 2 types of writings; which called rumi (romaji) and jawi. But they never use both in a sentence. Besides, jawi writing is difficult to find nowadays.
4. The counters. Unlike other languages, if you wish to count, you just memorized the number. But for nihon-go, there are several types of counters. I give you some examples:
1 = ichi, 3 = san
1 apple = hitotsu, 3 apples = mitsu.
1 paper = ichi-mai, 3 papers = san-mai.
1 bottle = ippon, 3 bottles = sanbon.
1 person = hitori, 3 peoples = sannin.
and so on.... (this is not include the date in a month... I have no idea how they memorized all of them)

It sounds like complaining too much, but the fact is, Japanese language is a fun language to learn. Hopefully I can talk a little bit Japanese once I leave this Cosmosquare Training Center.

Japanese Culture Training Ends

So now the first training ends.

I would like to share some pictures of the training here>>

Stay tuned~

Osaka ATC Green Eco Plaza > Explanation on the environmental issues
(credit to Mr. Shakir for this lovely picture)

The training members for this batch

(credit to Mr. Shakir for this lovely picture)

This is my kanji writing. For me it was nice, but for the native calligraphy writers it was an awful writing I guess!~

"Ok.. tunjukkan burung anda!!!" Origami - the Japanese arts of paper folding

At Matsushita Eco Technology Center Co Ltd. Here they are recycling 4 Electrical items. TV, Air-conditioner, refrigerator and washing machine.


After came back from Matsushita Eco Tech, we went to Umeda for jalan2.
Pekena kopi secawan...~

I drank this tea for the Tea Ceremony. It was a complicated yet fun ceremony.

Osaka update

I haven't update my blog for sometime. I got 2 reasons here:
1. Internet connection is super-slow (actually it was intermittent)
2. I don't have enough time; full of daily activities.

So, a week has passed. What did I learn? Japanese Culture. At first I might think that learning this culture is not as critical as learning the language. But then, after this whole week process, I had changed my mind by thinking that 1 week is not enough. I wish it could be a longer period.

Learning the culture is critically important as long as I am working or dealing with Japanese Company. When we talk about culture, they might be differ among each country or nation and it explains a lot of behavior. I just don't know how to explain this, but if you join this, you would think the same way too. (But make sure you have a positive mind before joining such classes).

Besides on culture, we did learn something about the environment. You know all the global warming and recycling stuff. But guess what, a lot of people just talking about the cause and effects. But here, they are really doing it. We have visited a factory which recycle electronics stuff. It is a very difficult process yet costly. They might not get profit from it; i.e. business people would not consider such a thing. But from our last visit, we actually seen people doing it. It means, they care about life and future more than the only making money. Hopefully, in the future we can see more giant companies doing the same thing to protect our environment. Let's make a better future!

Osaka...

Well here I am, in Osaka. I did finally made it here!
So today, I move from Kawasaki 7.00am in the morning, together with one of the Kawasaki staff. Riding the Shinkansen Nozomi, a shinkansen 500 series from Shinagawa at 7:58am and reached Shin-Osaka about 11 O'clock. After arriving at Cosmosquare International Education and Training Center, I was introduced to some of the trainers here. I made a few Malaysian friends working with Japanese Company. Most of the companies send 2 ~ 5 members for training, except for me and the other member from Brothers.

Training started today. It was the Japanese Culture. Of course every country practice different culture, but Japanese have a unique culture which is interest me to know more about it. After every explanation, I feel like - Owh no wonder.... So sure got a lot more to learn.

Facilities here are great. Room was marvelous, food taste good, everybody was warm and kind.
And finally I have somebody to talk to..Most of the trainees here done some training in their headquarters in Japan, so they know a little bit about Japan.


After dinner we have a quick walk to WTC just around 10 minutes from here, it's more like an orientation kot, we get to know each other closer. They are all cool and friendly.

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So, yesterday... the final day in the east side of Japan, I finally went to Asakusa. This place was strongly recommended by some of my friends, and it was like 'tak sah' visiting Japan and missed out this place. The famous of all, the Kaminarimon or Kaminari gate is the main attraction of Asakusa. There is a temple here where the buddist spending some time to pray. All around here, there's alot of activities, so it is worth a visit. Please put in your 'must go' list if you make a trip to Japan.