Happy Chinese New Year

First of all,
Happy Chinese New Year to all Chinese out there.
Thank you for the festive celebration I was entitled for not 1, not 2 but 3 holidays.

So, in less than 2 months time, 3 new years have been celebrated New Year 2008, Awal Muharram (Muslim New Year) and Chinese New Year. And I'm happy for those holidays.

Economy is not yet recover. Why? Still the biggest topic since last year, the Sub-prime Crisis. So most of the employee might not feel the impact of this crisis, but for those investors and businessman out there are getting crazy on this issue.
The issue only happened in America but it has effected the whole world's economy (See how powerful America is!) So, in order to tackle down this problem, the developed countries or known as the G-7 are going to have a meeting in Japan to discuss seriously on this matter.
Hopefully they can settle-down this issue so that we can see more smiley face after this.

On the other hand, I look this problem as an opportunity. I should pump-up some monies to my investment fund. Yes, the price is cheap. Less than 25c per unit. So, what are you waiting for?

MPT Family Day

First of all, sorry for not updating this blog for quite a long time. Currently my job-load did not allow me to do so. Today is Saturday, and I have to spare sometime to my blog in order to keep it alive and kicking.


A lot things happened lately, but to summarized up also makes a long story. So, I guess it's better for me to highlight the last week event. Family Day... Due to budget limitation, the company brought us to the Wet World Batu Pahat. And to make the day more interesting, I brought along my Nikon D40x along and shoot as much picture as I wish to before I went down to the pool.

The best friend of mine, Mr. Asiq which was also the Vice-chairman for the event, becomes the Master of Ceremony on that day. Since both of us were busy on that day (he's holding the mic and I'm holding my D40x), we only get a chance to enter the pool quite late. Soon after, most of the people went out of the pool and change before went back home. What a disappointed moment for both of us, not only we couldn't bring our family on that day, we had missed our chances to get along with others. And the worst thing when you become a photographer... guess what? Yes correct... There is no picture inside your camera.... And if in case you asked others to take for you, you might not get the picture as you wish. (I should consider to use the timer on that day....)


Highlight of the event?
After the opening ceremony by the MD, there's aerobic session. Then a water polo games between local managers and Japanese managers. The result? Tuan rumah kalah ditempat sendiri. It was quite an interesting games with most of the crowd watching this game. Beside, there's a few games... ala.. family day, biasa la.. Then, we also got karaoke singing. I sang 2 songs (with my wet t-shirt on).



Overall, Wet World in my opinion, is a so-so water theme park. I bet they can make it better. But maybe due to limitation - money? location? They might not want to make a Sunway Lagoon near to Tongkang Pecah, won't they?

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.