Pics from TQ Party and AK's surprise bash!

Thank You Party - Basically a party to thank everyone who was involved in Malaysian Night...

I had a hand in preparing the food... And I have to say I literally nearly had a finger in preparing the wantan. Lol. We had 200 over pieces of chicken and roasted most of them in the afternoon for the the party. It was quite an experience.. frying wantan/mini-popiah, marinating+roasting chicken and frying keropok.

It was Julie's idea to get a cake for Julian, one of our comm. members.. whose birthday was the next day. Boy, was he surprised!

Gllloorrrious foooodd!!

Who said Malaysians don't line up??


Boy, don't they look surprised!

Surprise! Happy Birthday Julian!!

Yeah.. you can really see that I really enjoyed taking this pic. Lol.

There's nothing up my sleeves!! I swear!!

Me and Julie... Mm.. my hair looks funny from this angle..

On this bus back.. we got a lil photogenic..

Aik Kuang Surprise Bash!

That weekend.. we had another opportunity to gorge ourselves silly with Malaysian Food! (Hey.. to those back home.. this is a big thing ok??! Even here.. we still live to eat! Lol.)

Yet again.. Julie's idea. We were to lure Aik Kuang over to Rutland dining hall to surprise him for his 21st Birthday. I got into lots of trouble for this actually... I told the dining hall manager that we were having a party but he thought we were just having a party. As such, when everyone arrived with the food and stuff they weren't too happy and the porter told me I should I have gotten permission from the office for it. But he was quite nice about it and let us carry on as long as we cleaned up the place well.

A bit later though.. the Hall's Warden himself wanted to talk to me and boy, he wasn't too happy. The conversation went something like this. *read all the wardens' line with a harsh tone*

Warden: Are you the young man in charge of this affair?
Me: Yes, sir.
Warden: Did you know you need permission from the office?
Me: Yes, sir. There was a slight miscommunaction.. etc..
Warden: Ok. We don't allow food not being served by our own staff being served here. If anything were to happen, YOU WILL BE RESPONSIBLE. And those deco you're hanging on the lights, if anything gets damaged, YOU WILL BE RESPONSIBLE.
Me: Yes, sir.
Warden: Ok, and make sure you don't play the music too loud and I want you all out by 10. I'll send the senior hall tutor down.

*Sigh* He's not the first warden I crossed path with in my time here.. I had to confront the hard-assed Cripps Hall Warden to get my bike back. Ah well... I guess in my future career in law, I've got to face lots of these sorts of characters. You know.. the hard-assed, grumpy sort. Ahh...Chalk it all down to experience.

Here, I have to note that because of Aik Kuang's Surprise (as you probably know now.. I surprised the Hall Management too!! Wahey!) Party.. Somehow, one of my hallmates couldnt have her own birthday gathering in the hall's dining hall on Wednesday.. I felt immensely guilty for that and tried to help her out and suggested to have it somewhere else. The next day, it was good to hear that they managed to cope although they only had 2 hours to relocate their party. Nevertheless, I'm still really sorry I burst your bubble, guys.

Errrr.... BACK to the party! It went well... We played some twister and this game.. Suck-a-card-and-pass-it-around or Dare (go figure!) where I did something I'm not very proud of. (I'm a bad sucker so..) Lol. Well, I can safely say that two certain individuals of the same gender can say the same! Sorry, inside joke. Don't worry, guys.. we'll have that pic circulating around uni in no time!! Muahahahahahahah!

Unfortunately, it wasn't as much as a surprise as it was for Aik Kuang as it was for Rutland Hall management. Our caterer let the cat out of the bag while chatting Aik Kuang.. Argh.. still good times we had.

Balloons kinda suggestive don't you think? Heh.

Birthday boy and his birthday cake...

Oh.. how our fates interwine...

Not as easy as it looks.../Look, ma.. no hands!

Mere mortals...

It's funny... I could write about better things but not today... At the moment I write, a Malaysian girl is in a Nottingham ICU and the doctors have not established the cause of her ailment. She was found unconscious in her room after not answering her housemate's calls for a day. The good news however is it seems she seems to be semi-conscious now and the Malaysian Society (with the help of some charitable people) has managed to arrange to get the mother to come up and visit her.

But one thing which struck me after that.. was the discovery that an acquaintance who was studying engineering here had to leave for Malaysia a month back because they discovered she had eye cancer.. and it was in the 4th and last stage. It was a real shock. I don't really know her.. I met her at a church's friend's birthday party and met her here again while lining up to pay for fees on the week zero here. Don't get me wrong.. maybe this is all new to me. I've never had someone really close to me or even someone remotely close to me.. kick the bucket. I can say I hope they don't..but I know they will...as the saying goes 'In this world nothing can be
said to be certain, except death and taxes.' It kinda puts everything in perspective and makes you realises the stuff you take for granted. Live a little more. Forgive and forget better and don't hold those grudges. Having said that.. my prayers go out to Rosalind and her friends and family. I didn't know her well but I know she deserves more years to her name.

A random post...

Hey all, It's easter break for the next 4 weeks.. Spent my 1st day of my break down in Manchester for 50% off dimsum and a look-see around Manc and also... a chinese dinner at one of the best restaurants in Manc. Didn't blow a hole in my pocket (in comparison to Notts Chinese Restaurants)... yet food was quite good. Manchester city is a truly unique city. A fusion of both modern and old in the city's architecture. I'll certainly have to come by again and hopefully the weather would be better that time.

And here I am now.. in Justin's place in Raleigh Park. Gonna be spending the night here before I go job-hunting tommorow morning.

A random thing I came across the newspapers today was a study that we, men are more likely to spend 4 times more on our favourite sport and that leads to a semi-related interesting find.. that men are 90% more likely to stick with their favourite sports team but have a 50% chance of abandoning a relationship when things go sour. (according to a Duracell study) Hah.. That's real life for you... lol.

Notts Malaysian Night pics..

mm.. chronological order of pics here @ http://www.xtemax.com/mnite/

Alternatively, visit the site's extension of http://www.xtemax.com/folio/
where is should be easier to browse and save the photos.

Thanks to Chee Siang for these pics and Regine for the previous pics.

Pics... from Notts Mnight 06

Mm.. my bro and make-up!

Most of the committee + cast and crew!!

A rather gay pic of me and Prav.

All these things we've done...

It's over. Notts Malaysian Night 2006. Lessons learnt. Weeks of preparation (not to mention I've got my life back!) and in an evening it's done. I've really forgotten how it feels. Back in Stella Maris, it used to be the norm each time there was a concert... The hecticness in preparing for weeks and on the day itself, you go out and do your thing.. and it's over. Our school had plenty of concerts in a year...(CNY/Raya concert, Merdeka concert, Feast Day, etc..) it seems like they find every excuse to have one... I miss our 4/5S Stella girls. They're a pretty unique bunch.. (not the bunch you wanna get into an argument)They're always up to the challenge. Ahhh.. getting all nostalgic here.

Well.. back to Notts Malaysian Night.. Lots of things didn't really go to plan but the important was we improvised and we pulled it off. A round of thank yous to everyone. Thank you to the Committee.. you guys did GREAT! Right from security to stage.. we did it, guys! Food was good and our guest really had a blast. Our actors were brilliant and spontaneous on stage and we made Notts Malaysian Night history with an audience of 430+! Reviews were great!

Basically, Malaysian Night started with a mocktail party. A first! Usually, it's a sit-down dinner kinda thing. So it's a mocktail party and people are meant to walk around and help themselves to food with performances going on. We started on time.. but people were shy to touch the food! Lol. Among the food we had were curry puffs, fried popiah, fried wantan (Credit goes to my coursemate, Catlynn for the recipe!), satay, seri muka, sago pudding, turkish delight and much more..! After a while, we had slight problems keeping up the food well-stocked.. people ate faster than we could refill! Some of the service points were a bit too far from our kitchen.. Nevertheless, it was a sucess. People were generally happy.

Next on the lineup was the actual play. We started off with some performances. We had a chinese fan dance, a rather modern malay dance, and some singing performances to get the audience warmed up. My bro and his housemate, Jasmine were emceeing. They did a good job.. My bro being pretty lame but still it worked.. lame humour tends to run in our family it seems. Lol. They did a great job nevertheless. I had to make a speech.. which I feel I could have prepared better. Lights glaring into your eyes and having 430 forced to listen to you can be pretty intimidating. Ah, well..

The play was unique. We constructed sets.. like a tv show set. Take a look.

We did it for the "OOmph"! Factor and basically coz, after all we were in a studio after all! We even played this up abit by acting as if we were actually tapping the play in front of a life audience. (Regine's idea!) The emcess took on the role of stage directors.. one(my bro) being an Ah Beng film director and Jasmine being the intelligent assistant. We had a directors umm.. 'gate', the black and white thingt.. and even played around with the 'Applause' cue cards!

The play was on P. Ramlee's classic film, Tiga Abdul. Those is 4/5s would remember Pn. Joyce letting us watch it. We adapted it to stage.. this was done by Akmal, our script-writer.
Some things weren't in the script like one of our actor's mustache falling off and our narrator's cloak sleeve knocking the mike black cushion part off.. but there were spontaneous and made the audience laugh more instead. The actors did great. In all the years, Nottingham Malaysian Night's strenght has always been in our play. This year has been no different.

Mm...From all the stress i've gotten the past weeks (evident with the shorter lifespan and exponential increase in growth of white hair) , among the lessons learnt I were:
1) Money makes the world go around.. working with a budget and a large event can be really tough...
2) Dealing with people.. this is always tough.. sometimes you just get people who cant work with each other.. some people will let you down in your darkest moments. Guess that's what friends are for. They walk in on you when others work out on you...
3) Assumptions - My dad always said this : Never assume! Always clarify. Mm.. how true.
4) Plan B/C - When you get plan B always make sure plan B works. And you should get Plan C.
5) Keep it simple - Sometimes, it's best to keep things simple and not try to cut corners or go for 'too good to be true' stuff...
6) Commitment - In life, you just meet people who will have different levels of commitment.. and no one person is the same.
7) Foresight and improvisation - Murphy's law. Things WILL go wrong. Improvise.
8) Patience - You can never have enough of this.. I was on the brink of insanity on the day before the event. There were times when I had two people asking me separate things and my phone would suddenly ring..

I probably write this for my own reference.. it's been a valuable experience.. I'll admit there were areas we could have improved but the past is the past.. Just gotta move on with this experience and make better, wiser decisions the next time.. mm.

Just this morning, we were back in the studio to clean up the area. At the end of it, both me and Aik Kuang just stood there. There was some music playing over the sound system.. and we just soaked it all in. It's over. A chapter has ended. We both admitted we felt abit sad. There's the accounts to be settled but at that moment it didn't matter. We did it. We pulled it off. Thanks, guys.

Long overdue....

Hey all,
Wow, it's been more than one month since my last update. Believe me, it's not coz not much has been happening but it's actually, the opposite. I just got back from a day down in London. The bus back from the Notts train station to my hall was funny. There were a huge bunch of young people behind me and there were two couples and the guys were actually helping the girls apply makeup. That's a new one.. didnt know applying make-up was one of the job requirements as a BF. Heh.

Anyway, I digress.. What have I been up to? Been spending every of my week nights witj Malaysian Night. Check it out at : www.nottsmalaysiannight.com Everything's going well but the work does seem never-ending...

I spent last weekend at a Magician's convention. I went down to Blackpool with the Magic Society and had a great time with em. There were lectures, close-up magic sessions (where the best close-up magicians showed us their routines) and there were gala shows on Saturday and Sunday night. The gala show was mind-blowing! There was a semi-David Copperfield wannable who did the whole metamorphosis (where the magician waves a bedsheet and changes into his lovely assistant.. talk about instant sex-change! ) There was the Men in Coats who parody magic and there was a mentalist martial artist! He poured wax over his eyes, wrapped it with bandages and covered it with aluminium foil and then he used nun-chucks to destroy a plank, a knife to stab a bag of flour and sliced a watermelon.. all held by members of the audinece.. blindfolded!

But the greatest magician was probably this guy who used techonology to perform magic where he had a giant screen tv and pre-recorded something on the TV. The guy on the TV was actually him and acted like he was his 'imaginary friend'. When the imaginary friend through stuff out the screen.. it actually popped out into real life! And he also did the opposite.. giving stuff to him.. like pouring milk and giving a bag of chips to him! The coolest part was when the person in the tv pressed REWIND and the magician actually 'rewinded' Man.. this is something you've got to see yourself.

Ahh..well.. that's all for now. With this flu I have , I've turned into a walking volcano of mucus and phelgm. Whee. Need all the rest I can get... Till next time, peeps! Take care all.