Fireworks and Thunderclouds

The Malaysia International Fireworks Competition (MIFC 2007) is being held in Putrajaya, from 18 August till 2 September, presumably in conjunction with our very own Merdeka celebrations. The participants in the competition are supposedly the best pyrotechnists in their respective countries and the countries involved are Malaysia, Australia, Italy, Japan, Canada and Team Global(?).  I had to chance to be there to witness for myself what it is all about, but boy I was disappointed. I went on the 19th, and the team “performing” on that day isn’t actually competing in the competition and thus we were treated with a dismal performance by Team Global (which is then when I found out the word Global is from the company name of the event’s main sponsor).

Then again, I have to thank Ban Soon for giving me a lift all the way to Putrajaya which is quite a distance from my place. It took more than half an hour of rather speedy driving on a rather traffic-free highway, so it really is quite far.

We were there a minute late and the second we parked our car, the fireworks display started. Ban Soon and I had to hurry to the lakeside to get a clear view of it and barely minutes after we set up our cameras (which in my case means groping in the dark looking for a good spot on the ground to leave my camera on) the display ended! We waited for almost half an hour hoping that it was temporarily halted due to the excessive smoke from the fireworks but alas, no signs of continuation. A man who brought his entire family along came by us and started complaining about the miserable performance when we ourselves were already disappointed.

Anyway, I didn’t manage to get good pictures of the fireworks display due to *cough* equipment limitations and even if I did, it would pale in comparison with so many other magnificent pictures taken by real professional. Just google “MIFC” and you’ll see. In any case, if you’d like to see very much more presentable pictures compared to mine, head over to Ban Soon’s photo gallery. Though I did manage to get a not-too-terrible shot of Putrajaya’s Bridge 8.

Surprisingly, I think Akon was in Putrajaya too. I suppose he held a concert there because we could hear the entire thing crystal clear even though we were at least half a kilometer away. They must have a pretty amazing sound system there.

Ban Soon and I left after giving up hope that there’s more fireworks display to come, and we went to the nearby Oldtown Kopitiam where he treated me, again. He insisted that I return the favour only when I have job, something which I’ll be sure to do. We didn’t stay too long because he had work early next morning, so we headed back home after a disappointing night.

Speaking of disappointments, I just had a big one.

And I wonder if it was simply due to my own plain stupidity - for being too naive and gullible. Perhaps I was meant to learn this lesson the hard way. This mistake of mine is a costly one. To think that I did a good thing is laughable, now that I look back at it, it’s just plain stupid.

Losing material possessions disappoints me, but losing a friend along with it disappoints me more.

BWF World Championships 2007

A few days back, I went to watch the World Badminton Championships in Stadium Putra, Bukit Jalil which happens to be within walking distance from my place. I’m not that big a badminton fan, I just figured that it would be a good experience to witness live badminton at least once (after much prodding from *cough* a hardcore badminton fan). So I chose to go for the quarter and semi-finals, because I wasn’t expecting Malaysia to be playing in the finals… and I was right.

Anyway, I had a hard time taking pictures of all the action and this time I have to blame my hardware, something I never like to do. There wasn’t anything I could do about it as my miserable Olympus mju 410 did not have a quick enough shutter speed no matter what settings I tried. I had no choice but to take pictures of the players when they were standing still, otherwise they would just be a blur.

This was stationed outside the stadium, first time I ever saw something like that. It made me hungry before the games even started. The white bearded man is evil.

I’ve never been to Stadium Putra before, despite the fact that I stay so close to it but everything there felt familiar, because I literally see them everyday (from afar, but still). The games started at exactly the stipulated time, something which you seldom see in Malaysia! In fact I was almost late on the first day because me and my friends weren’t expecting the huge amount of people there. On the second day we knew better so we parked our cars outside of the stadium and walked in. It was a lot quicker and coming out was a lot easier.

The following pictures are not arranged chronologically because I’m too lazy

Malaysia’s men’s doubles Koo Kien Keat & Tan Boon Heong vs Japan’s Sakamoto Shuichi & Ikeda Shintaro. We lost the match but it was an incredible one. The Japanese played brilliantly and we ended applauding them!

Denmark’s Peter Gade vs Indonesia’s Sony Dwi Kuncoro. Peter Gade wasn’t as good as I expected him to be and lost to Sony in a straight match, and he even got himself a yellow card on the way.

China’s Lin Dan vs China’s Bao Chun Lai. Lin Dan beat Bao easily. In fact he beat everyone else easily and won the Men’s Singles.

Malaysia’s Wong Mew Choo vs China’s Zhu Lin. Mew Choo lost despite putting up a good fight and managed to force a rubber game from a game down. A great effort considering Zhu Lin won the Women’s Singles.

Malaysia’s Choong Tan Fook and Lee Wan Wah vs Indonesia’s Kido Markis and Setiawan Hendra. The entire match was riddled with errors from both sides. It wasn’t as exciting to watch as the match between our doubles and the Japanese doubles.

There are far more matches played in the two days - totalling 30 but I wasn’t in much of a mood to take pictures because it was difficult to get a good shot. I had much better luck with my friend’s dSLR but the pictures I took are with him.

Since I couldn’t take much of the action, I took pictures from inside the stadium and stitched them together. It’s a pretty big place, but whether or not it could fit the advertised 16,000 people I’m still not too sure.

It was pretty good fun to be able to experience live badminton, and feeling the energy in the crowd. But then again, I was there to experience first-hand the incivility of some people. Some may call it patriotism, but patriotism or not, they’ve taken their actions too far. If only they’re put in a foreign country with a 5000-strong crowd booing at them for almost no apparent reason besides the fact that they are merely the opponents of the supporting crowd’s team and calling them names with personal insults, maybe they won’t be so retarded anymore.

I don’t usually like big events with massive crowds, nevertheless this time it wasn’t all that bad.

Calorie (or lack thereof)

My classes on Wednesday usually end a bit later than other days, so I often have dinner with the now-famous Sri Petaling Gang. Ivan was missing this time, he said he’s broke so he decided to have dinner at home. We were joined by the 2V’s and TK (names have been concealed to protect their identities). We regularly have dinner together on Wednesdays anyway. Today, we decided to try a new place - Calorie.

What a name. I thought they’d be serving extra-high calorie food but unfortunately it’s the other way around. I needed the extra calories anyway. Yeah but anyway, I drew that logo myself. It doesn’t look exactly like that, but I’m pretty sure it’s something similar - Comic Sans MS text coloured like Google!

The menus actually state the calorie count for each of its main meals. You could see at one glance that they’re into healthy food (not health food) and so I was disappointed. Haha! Okay not really but I definitely wouldn’t mind the extra calories.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of my food so I guess there’s not much point getting into details about what I ate, but it’s worth mentioning that they’re different from what we usually get from other eateries. The most noticeable thing is their minimal use of oil. It’s unusual for outside food to be prepared that way, because well… generally (appropriately) oily food tastes better But it wasn’t bad at all, their dishes had a light and simple taste to it without being bland.

An interesting place to say the least, definitely worth a visit if you’d appreciate simple and healthy food. If you ever drop by Sri Petaling, Calorie is somewhere opposite of Sri Petaling Hotel, directly opposite of the Sri Petaling KFC outlet.

Distracted

It’s been a long and dull weekend. Yes, Mondays and Tuesdays are still considered weekends because I don’t have classes My Internet had been giving me much troubles, and I’m not even using our infamous Streamyx. Malaysian ISP’s are hopeless, Streamyx or not.

My eyesights are fuzzy from staring at too much programming code from my final year project, and it’s not even a quarter done. Having a dead connection is good in a way, I had less distractions but that also means I’m confined to my local workspace and will not be able to do necessary research.

That fellow above is the thing on my desktop wallpaper. He is supposed to be known as the Cream King. Cream King. Look at it closely, and you’ll realise that it is in fact quite aptly named. Or aptly drawn. Either way. Genius.

As I write this, my connection is dead again. I don’t know when I’ll be able to get this published.

Distracted I really am. I’m not sure if this post even made any sense.

The Adventures of Sri Petaling Gang

Yesterday could have been a very mundane day. Went to college in the morning. Nothing new. Went for a badminton game in the evening. Still the same. Was about to go Berjaya Times Square to catch The Simpsons movie at night - and the day took a turn of events which made it not a very mundane day after all.

The movie was at 9.15pm. As usual, the Sri Petaling Gang which is made up of Edward, Wei How, Ivan and me was standing by and waiting for Edward to pick us up. At 8.18pm, Edward said “coming now“. And I gave him my customary “ok”. Precisely 3 minutes later, he suddenly came back online and said “gg no need go d no car“. And chaos ensued.

Edward didn’t realise that his dad drove out with the car (We suspect his dad works for some kind of Secret Intelligence Service). We cannot just “let’s go another day” because the tickets were already purchased in advanced. Wei How immediately suggested taking the LRT, and promptly left home to run off to the LRT station. I too immediately got ready to run down to the LRT station when right before I left home Edward messaged me again - saying that Ivan will be picking us up instead. Ivan rarely ever has the chance to drive, and due to the desperate circumstances and with some creative thinking he managed to get permission to drive.

Wei How was already out of his home, waiting for a taxi when he got notified that Ivan will be picking him up. I on the other hand went down immediately after I got the signal that Ivan was on his way to my place. By then, it was already 8.45. After Ivan picked me up, we had to hurry to Edward’s place to pick him up. It was then when Ivan said his car was short of petrol and we had to refill some. We then picked Edward up, got a refill and started our journey to Berjaya Times Square. It was 9pm. The movie starts at 9.15pm. I thought it’d be impossible to make it there on time. Typically it takes more than half an hour to get there, find a parking and get into the cinema.

Unexpectedly, traffic was clear. Ivan drove as quickly as he could without being reckless as I was there lecturing him with my famous quote - “If you drive slowly, you might reach a little late. If you drive too fast, you might not reach.”

We got to BTS without much delay, went into the parking bay and very luckily found ourselves a parking spot rather quickly. Locked up the car and started pacing to the cinema. There, I quickly collected my tickets without having to queue up because I already purchased them earlier - while Wei How was still queueing up to buy popcorn! It was 9.30pm.

After the tickets were collected, Howard appeared, Wei How got his popcorn, we hurried to Hall 3. Very unexpectedly, the movie hasn’t started! Man, were we lucky. After so much happened, we weren’t late for the movie!

I’m glad we weren’t, because every minute of The Simpsons was absolutely hilarious. It was funny even before the actual show started! It was one of the very few movie which I found genuinely funny. The humour was incredibly ridiculous without being lame. I was having a cough which started a few days back, and I was hacking my lungs all the way through the movie. Torturous. In a good way.

If you’re in need of some laughs, do catch The Simpsons. No other movies can offer you such a dose of insane humour.