The weeks just flew by from the moment we had our complete team. We had never worked together before, but we were certainly going to try.

And it all culminated to this… it was over on Saturday.

Yes, yes, I know the opening sounds dramatic. Had to get your attention mah.

I haven’t competed in a line dance team competition in ages. I have been actively joining individual competitions, but my last team competition was two years ago, and that wasn’t even line dance. So when I found out about a line dance team competition in Malacca which was open to all teams from Malaysia, I asked a few of my dance friends if they would like to participate.

The first two I asked had to turn me down because they had other personal commitments, but the next two I asked were very interested. Unfortunately, we were still two short because the competition required a minimum of 5 in a team to participate. We managed to get one more, and it was by a breath’s width from the entry deadline that we found our final team member.

Finding the team members was the easy part. The hard part is coming together.

I must say, I honestly could not have asked for a better team. While it was true that all five of us were of different skill levels, what made it work was that every single one of us was committed and dedicated, and not a single person complained. Perhaps it was the novelty of being in a team. Some of us would be tired especially since the practices were at night (after work/classes), but when something needed to be done, we would all just suck it in and keep working at it until we got it right.

I did most of the choreography and styling, but I had plenty of creative input from the girls. Florence, who also has a lot of experience being in a team and has a little jazz dance background, threw in some good variations and steps. She was also the one who came up with the team name.

Bronya saw us twice before the competition; once when we just got together where not much was done, and she expressed her displeasure, hence all those nights I pushed around 5 little chess pieces just to figure out formations (my friends on Facebook will testify to all my weird status messages for those 2 weeks), and on the weekend just before the competition. She didn’t say much – she wanted the team to present what was completely our own – although she gave us very sound advice which we incorporated to make the routine better.

We were aware however, that we needed to get used to large open spaces, so the last two practices saw us on a basketball court in the middle of a housing estate, amidst amused children, teenagers and adults. At 10pm at night.

Day of competition arrives. 6th December 2008.

We traveled to Malacca together in a three-car convoy, reaching the venue in time for the 2pm rehearsals. The space was huge – it was a hall in a chinese school, and when we tried the floor, we struggled with the space distribution. And so we practised outside the hall, and just kept trying to get our formations right.

We then went back to the hotel to get ready – shower, make-up, hair.

We were supposed to get back to the venue by 6.30pm, but in true Malaysian style we got there a little after 7pm. Fortunately, in even truer Malaysian style, the competition would only start at 8pm.

We were just settling into our table when I opened my bag and found – horror of horrors, I had left the team tag number in the hotel!!!

Only Bronya and I-Vee had driven from the hotel (the other car was Flo’s husband), and Bronya was busy at the adjudicator’s table. I saw I-Vee (one of our dearest friends and supporters) walking towards the exit (I didn’t know for what) but? I ran up to her and grabbed her arm, asking if she could send me back to the hotel to get the tag. Without blinking an eyelid, she agreed. As she went to get her keys, I stared at the slow-moving traffic outside the school, and then I suggested I ran back (the hotel was not very far) to which she told me not to be silly and insisted on driving me there.

We managed to get back in time for the competitor’s parade. Thank you, I-Vee, I love you!

We were the third team to go on the floor. Nervous as hell, yeah, but watching the video afterwards, it was the best we had ever danced together. I was so thankful for that – some teams screw up on the actual day, but not ours! No matter what the results turn out to be, we had done our best. We could not ask for more than that.

It was great to have gone on third. We were so relaxed after that, eating dinner, and even joining the general dancing. The competition had fourteen entries, and they had split the competition into two parts – 7 in the first half and 7 in the second half, with general dancing in between giving the competition a break. Had we been in the second half, we’d have been nervous and we could not have enjoyed ourselves; and in fact would have been hungry, as I would not have let the team go on the floor with a full stomach.

When it came to the results announcement, I was surprised to find out that consolation prizes were given out as well. I thought only the top 3 would get prizes.

They first announced the winners for the Malacca Closed tournament (for teams from Malacca only) – 4 finalists and the top 3, before they got to the Malacca Open tournament (all fourteen teams fought in this category) – 3 finalists and the top 3. Mr Leong who is the president of the Malacca Line Dance Association (MLDA) who organised the competition and who was also announcing the results, said that the finalists were announced in no particular order and that all the finalists received the same cash prize.

I’d already suspected that we wouldn’t get top 3 because after the competition, two teams were recalled to do a dance-off because they both tied for second place; and we were not one of those two. And I was not vain enough to think we could get champion, because there was another team which was very energetic and skilled, and I suspected they would be the champions.

So when they announced the finalists, I listened for our name, and when they came to the last finalist, I prayed it was our team – and it was!! We each received a medal and the team got a cash prize.

And I was right about the champion team.

Nevertheless, I think it’s awesome that for a first-time team, we managed to get a consolation prize. In fact, Bronya who was the chief judge, came over to tell us later that we were actually ranked a very close fourth – the marks difference between us and the 3rd team was very very small.

[Note: Lest you all think there was favouritism, let me be the first to say that Bronya is the fairest judge I know and she can even be harder on us whom she knows And the teams that got 1st and 3rd place were trained by one of the other judges. But that doesn't mean they deserved it any less. They were excellent teams who deserved their medals]

So although we didn’t get top 3, I was actually quite pleased with the results and wasn’t disappointed at all. The team is after all still very new, and while we work together, we’re not in sync with each other yet. Now all we need to do is just keep working together until we’re in sync and good

Video will be posted up once I’ve converted it. In the meantime, take a look at my photo album. There aren’t any action photos of us competing because everyone was taking videos of us. Will post more links to the other albums once the others have uploaded their own.

Finally…at long last, I managed to upload photos from my Gua Tempurung trip on Facebook!!!

On Monday which was a public holiday, I went to Gua Tempurung with my sister, her friend Nathalee, and Nathalee’s husband Stephen. Gua Tempurung is a cave in Gopeng, Perak. We wanted to try basic caving, and there were guided cave tours with 4 different levels of difficulty. We of course took the most difficult level, which was supposed to be “strenuous” and would take up to 3.5 hours to complete.

The tour was… OK. It got very boring and monotonous towards the end. But there’s a lot of things wrong with the way it was conducted.

1. To start the tour, there is a required a minimum of 8 people, but that morning, what they did was they lumped all the participants who signed up for the toughest level in one big group of 40+. And the number of tour guides for this group was…. ONE. And this one guide never even did a head count before going into the cave; and throughout the caving tour, he never checked to see if everyone had arrived at the next checkpoint before moving onto the next, or before explaining something (especially how to do a particular activity). Oftentimes the four of us were a little left behind (because we were taking photos or something). Although we caught up easily enough, I couldn’t help thinking if anyone got injured, the guide wouldn’t even know, and it would be difficult to call for help.
2. They did not properly inform us what we should and shouldn’t bring/wear. My sister had looked up on the Gua Tempurung website which said we should wear hiking boots. We didn’t have boots, so my sister and I wore sports shoes. However, Nat and Stephen wore strapped sandals. When we bought the tickets, they asked at the counter if the sandals were acceptable, and the reply was, “Yes, in fact that is better.” My sis and I were quite pissed off about that. I mean, we knew the tour was going to involve some water activities, but if we had known that those sandals were preferred, we’d have worn that instead. As a result, our shoes kept filling with sand and stones. By the end of the tour, I had to walk on tiptoe because the sand and stones hurt my feet.
3. 5 minutes before we started the tour, one of the attendants said that we should not bring our wallets etc, and we should leave behind expensive cameras. Stephen had brought his DSLR camera. We had a quick discussion, and then just as the tour group started going in, we quickly requested to go to our cars to put our things down, but he said the tour was already starting, and said in BM, “I already told you not to bring those things earlier!” Yeah, 5 minutes before. Shouldn’t they have given us time to put things aside then? The four of us were silly enough to bring backpacks thinking we’d need water etc. None of the other participants brought anything else except a flashlight and some brought cameras.
4. After we finished the tour, my sister and I filled up the guestbook, but it seemed that they preferred the guestbook to be filled in by foreigners because the attendant in charge of the book pointedly asked Stephen to fill it up, since he was a Mat Salleh. Yeah, we locals are just second-class citizens, right?

Anyway, as for the tour itself, the “strenuous activities” consisted of: wading through water, crawling through water, belly-crawling through water (we four skipped that one. We found that there was a way to walk around it, hahahahahaha), and one slide down a muddy slope. Nothing very stressful – for me, at least. I brought my waterproof Olympus camera and my sister took photos to her heart’s content.

I did have one fall in the cave, because my torchlight gave out as I was wading through the underground river, so I tripped and fell onto the rocks. No serious injuries, but I had a lot of bruises on my legs and arms because of that.

The tour took 4.5 hours for our group to complete because the group was too bg. By the end of the third hour, we were already actually getting bored. There was only so many photos we could take – all we could see was a dark background everytime we snapped because the flash couldn’t illuminate everything! So we compensated by having lots of stupid poses.

My photos and Nathalee’s photos are on Facebook.

Oh… and I couldn’t resist. This photo screamed to be made into an ad. By the way, this Hercules bag has been with me since I was in Form 4 (1995)… so it’s been more than 10 years!! It’s very sturdy and it’s also waterproof. I love it not only because of that, but because no one else seems to have this bag, so no one could ever pick it up and pretend it’s theirs. In fact, no one would want to – it’s not a cool bag! Back in school when everyone was carrying branded stuff like Nike or Reebok or something, I happily carried this bag because I could see it a mile away, and if I left it anywhere unattended, no one could claim it as theirs. If anyone tried to make off with it, I could point and shout, “That’s mine!!!!”

I had a bit of a nightmare just now.

Well, it’s not really a nightmare so to speak, and I came out unscathed and fine, but it was a horrible experience nevertheless.

Here’s what happened.

I’m a partner of a company with Sheila and we have an office in PJ (I won’t say where exactly for security reasons) that we don’t use very often because we usually work from home. It’s on the top floor, and there are 2 other offices in the same lot, and all the offices belong to the same owner. One was empty and the other was a solicitor’s office. All the offices were broken into recently, and we were kind of lucky compared to the solicitor’s as only one of our computers was stolen, and even that was more like a personal PC rather than our data PC. The PC which held our important data was untouched, although its computer screen was taken. The solicitors had quite a lot of things taken.

Anyway, because of the break-in, the owner had changed the locks on the doors downstairs which opens to the stairwell that leads to all three offices. I held the original copies given to our company, and I had used them once after the break-in, and they worked. I had even lent them to Sheila when she hadn’t had a copy made yet, and at that time they worked when she used them too.

When she returned my keys, I made a copy of all the new keys and gave them to her. But the key to the padlock on the grill door downstairs didn’t work, and she blamed my keymaker, so she made her own set. And it still didn’t work, so she was going to make a copy again at another keymaker, but as I hadn’t passed her my key yet, she didn’t.

It all suddenly sunk in just now as to why.

I went to the office just now towards closing time, when it was still open. However when I wanted to leave about 7.15pm, I went downstairs and found that the offices were already closed and locked up. And they locked the doors downstairs too.

It was stupid of them not to check if there was anyone still around. But that’s not the worst bit.

MY KEYS DIDN’T WORK ON THE PADLOCK EITHER!!!

It was like a nightmare! I couldn’t get out!

The problem for me was because I don’t go to the office often, I did not have anyone else’s phone number – the owner, nor the people in the solicitor’s! I had no idea who had locked up, and how to get hold of them! I tried calling Sheila a million times to no avail (she later told me she had been busy with something else), to see if she had any of their numbers.

I had even gone up to the office and opened the window and looked to see if there was a way down… problem was because we were on the top floor, I could not find a way to climb down. There was an “emergency back door”, which I managed to open and get all the way down, but the door at the end was locked from the outside and I could not even get it to budge.

It was a horrifying situation. I was like, there is no way I was going to stay the night in the office. To top it off, I was supposed to have tuition at 7.30pm, which I obviously couldn’t make! I wasn’t really panicking, but I was utterly furious!

I was not strong enough to break open the door (obviously), and well, the hinges of the door are not the kind which I could use a screwdriver to take down.

I didn’t know if my father could cut the lock open, but I tried calling my sis to ask him for help. He was in the shower when I called, so while I waited for my sis to ask him, I found the number of a locksmith in the stairwell (it was on a sticker that was stuck to one of the pipes. Kind of like the Ah Long style ads) and I called him to see if he could come over. I explained the situation and he said he could come over in 25 minutes, and it would cost RM100.

But anyway my sis managed to get hold of my dad, who said he can cut it open but I need to find a power source for him to plug it into. I had no idea where to get one. There was a shop next to us, but I didn’t know if it was still open.

You see, there were two doors downstairs – one wooden door, and one grill. The grill however had a piece of metal welded all over the front of it, and there was only one small opening around the lock for people to padlock the grill on the inside. The doorknob to the wooden door was on the other side, and as long as my hands were, I could not possibly open the doorknob to flag people down.

I was furious at the person who locked up, but I was even more furious about the fact that my key didn’t work. I mean, I can’t really blame the person who locked up, because it was the most natural thing to do, since they were probaby usually the last persons in the lot. But someone had changed the locks, and did not give us a working key, and this is obvious because the solicitor’s office had a key that worked, to open in the morning and to lock up at night.

Anyway my sis and dad came to the rescue. I called the locksmith back to tell him that my dad was coming but I’ll call him later if I needed his help – and all I got was the phone put down on me. I guess he was annoyed that he lost business. Apparently money is more important to him than the safety of a young woman trapped in her own office.

Anyway, as I was waiting for my sis and my dad, I tried to call up someone to while the time with away and managed to get hold of Jefri who patiently listened to my furious ranting and raving. Bronya then returned my call and even came over to see if there was anything she could do for me. She, with her 2 boys in tow, arrived the same my sis and dad did, about 8.20pm. There was enough space under the door for me to hand my keys to my sis to open the wooden door, and I finally managed to see the world beyond through the little square on the grill door.

The shop next door was still operating (thank god!), and after checking out the situation of the padlock on the grill, my dad hooked up his power saw, using the power supply from the shop. Wearing his gloves, I held the padlock up while he sawed right through it. I was honestly surprised that he could. I mean, those lockmakers say that their locks cannot be cut through and all that. Well, here’s proof that the myth is BUSTED!!!

And finally… I’m free!

I took the lock with me. I couldn’t be bothered about replacing the lock with another. I was too angry.

My sister said that she had actually considered packing my toiletries and moisturiser and stuff just in case I needed to stay the night… and I’m like, no way! Do or die, I was going to get out of that office tonight!

And you know what… about 10-15 minutes after I was out (we were hanging around because my father kept his tools and I locked up), someone from the solicitor’s came back and opened the door. I was too tired to go berate him (wouldn’t know if he’s the guilty one of locking me up anyway) and I decided to let them figure out for themselves the mystery of the disappearing lock.

Sheila finally calls me back at 8.40pm and I let loose my fury. I told her to make a scene with the owner and the solicitor’s office. I was also going to write a nasty letter about the padlock incident which she would send to the owner.

The point is, it doesn’t matter about being locked in by someone from the other office. Prior to the break-in, I had been late alone in my office before and the doors downstairs have been locked before too. But it didn’t matter because I had a set of keys that could open them. This time, none of my keys could open the all-important padlock causing me to nearly spend the night in the office. Considering that after the break-in, I could open the new padlock with the given key, there is no reason why my key shouldn’t work this time. And with all the problems Sheila had with her own copied key, well… it’s not the keymaker’s fault. Someone f***ed up by changing the padlock and not giving us a key.

If you say it doesn’t matter, because we’re hardly there anyway, and we can access our office during office hours, then how the f*** can we access our own office during the weekends and holidays and even at night when we need to? Shall we just get locked in again like I did tonight?

OK, so my first post on Teacher’s Day will be solely on what happened at school.

Teacher’s Day at Sri KDU was held earlier than the actual 16th May because our Mid-year exams will start on the 9th of May all the way through to the 23rd. We can’t disrupt the mid-year exams in favour of a celebration for the teachers, right? Nosirree!!

So anyway guess what was in store for us. Unlike in the old days (Good God, I sound old) when students would perform for us, we were the entertainment for the students. Fortunately, unlike 2 years ago, we didn’t have to put up any performance or skit or dance. It was just good ol’ telematch.

As much as I complained, I hate to admit it, I was probably a contributing factor to the idea. I won’t take full credit for the idea because… well, I don’t dare. My colleagues will probably kill me if they found out. See, what happened was when Ms Hariet (the deputy principal) to me when Teacher’s Day would be held a few weeks back, I asked her what was planned and she said no plans yet… so I suggested some simple games in the form of a telematch. You know, things like “egg-on-spoon race” and silly things like that.

Guess what was the first game we had to play. Ah, no, they improved on the idea. “Ping pong ball-on-spoon race … with spoon held in mouth”.

Argh, I don’t have any photos of that race.

Anyway, what happened was that Ms Hariet split us into teams of 8 with a colour code to match. We didn’t get to choose our own team, but I think it’s because we were short of time anyway. I was in Group 6 (Yellow). Fortunately I had a few yellow T-shirts to choose from to wear on Friday, because the number of teachers wearing the correct colour T-shirt will gain points for the team. If I was in Green, I’d have lost the team points unless they were willing to look at my pretty green underwear instead of the T-shirt. I have lots of pretty underwear in yellow too, but fortunately no one needed to look at them because the yellow T was sufficient.

The games were organised and planned by the school prefectorial board, held at the Sports Complex. And they are as follows:

Game #1: Ping pong ball-on-spoon

Like I mentioned earlier, the spoon must be held in mouth. The teams are supposed to have 10 people each, but some teams didn’t have enough teachers because some of the teachers were either pregnant or ill (forgiveable); or they chose to not come to school or to skip the games even though they were in school (unforgiveable). Anyway, the teams that didn’t have enough members were filled by students who were willing to play this game.

What they did was they split the teams into 2, placing 5 on one end and the other 5 on the other side about 10 metres away. One team member will start by balancing the ping pong ball on a plastic spoon held in his/her mouth, and has to walk across to the other side and pass the ping pong ball to the next team member, and this will go on until all 10 have completed the race. If any one member drops the ball halfway, he/she has to restart his/her walk (not the entire team). The last member that completes the race then has to run to the end of the field and grab a number pinned up there. Preferably number 1, to show they’re the first team to complete the race.

Don’t wanna sound mean, but our team could probably have been a lot of faster without our student competitor who kept dropping the ball. But we appreciate the effort anyway.

The good thing is, we were last at one point, but Mr Rajanderan managed to overtake Jason Lam and we came out second last. Woohoo! At least we weren’t last!

I think others may have photos of the race, but I don’t for obvious reasons – I had to play. Hehe. I did manage to get a photo of my colleagues getting ready though.

Game #2: Blind feeding the blind

Next, when they announced that it was time to eat, I honestly thought we could go for breakfast (I was really hungry because I bought my breakfast but hadn’t had time to eat it…) so I actually turned to go back to my staffroom. Thevahi had to chide me before I realised that it was actually the next game.Each team was to pick 5 teachers, and I was pretty reluctant but then oh well, what’s there to lose, right? So in my group, Thevahi, Saravanan, Rajanderan, Azhar and myself.

We thought that all of us would have to eat, but it turns out it’s nothing like Fear Factor. This is how the game would work. All the participating teachers will be blindfolded, and will be split up. Four of the teachers will be given a type of food to hold, and they have to look for the teacher who will do the eating. There was a rather big bun, a banana, a bowl of nasi lemak, and a box of chocolate milk. I was holding the chocolate milk, and was going to drink some of it but I wasn’t allowed

So anyway, my team found Azhar pretty quickly. I didn’t cheat. I swear. I can’t speak on behalf of my teammates though <hehehehehe>. Poor Azhar had to work his way through the four foodstuff. We wanted to help him eat, but weren’t allowed. He later told us that he was actually full from breakfast. But still, he gallantly tried to eat everything as quickly as possible.This time we were the second group to finish. Woohoo!
Games #3,4,5,6,7: Obstacle Course

The next game is really five in one. It’s called the obstacle course, because it consists of many obstacles.

Because it consists of many obstacles, they couldn’t get all eight teams to play at once, so they made Groups 1-4 play first. Because we were Group 6, we had the advantage of watching the other teams go first, and we could learn from their mistakes. The bad news is, as we found out later, the first four groups which finished first got to go back to their staffrooms and enjoy the air-condition and have their breakfasts. By this time, many of the student audience had dwindled as they lost interest and went back to the secondary school instead of watching the teachers make a fool of themselves on the field. I still had my camera on me, as I did for the earlier 2 games, but this time I handed it to Genna who followed me around to take photos of me as I made a fool of myself.

The first obstacle was “pass the water balloons” game. (In case you were wondering, all the names of the games here were made up by me for the purpose of this blog entry.) We had to get 10 team members in a row (if insufficient, again get student fillers) and pass a water balloon from one end to the other. We watched the teams toss balloons along the row, and almost all teams broke their balloons. So obviously we learnt how to keep the balloons intact – in my team we used our T-shirts to catch the balloon, and/or carefully pass them from hand to hand (we REALLY stretched for this one). As our filler this time we got Charles, who was a real good sport.

We only get 5 balloons, so break or not, upon using 5 balloons, we had to move on to the next game. We managed to pass over 3 intact balloons, but one burst as Jaya placed it on the ground.

The next game was called the “Newspaper Walk” (named by the prefects). Basically each team was given a set of newspapers (I don’t know how many pages) and we had to use the newspapers to walk from one end to another (about 20 metres away). So what all teams did was one team member would tear up the papers and lay the steps for the rest of the team.

The next game was a simple one that kids usually play. Pass a hula hoop through a human chain. Accomplished easily enough. The fourth obstacle isn’t so easy. A pail on one side, and a bottle less than 10 metres away… the aim is to get the water from the pail into the bottle (up to a level marked in red) without carrying the pail. Jaya whipped off his shirt and soaked it in the water, whereas Pn Ramlah took her shoe off and offered it as a water vessel, as did Anpa. The rest of us merely used our hands to carry the water.

We made the mark!

The last game was… well, odd. The prefects had tied rafia string into obstacles of squares and placed eggs randomly into the squares. They made us get into pairs and had each pair bind one foot to each other – with one facing the front and one facing the back, and had to cross through the rafia string obstacles by avoiding the squares with the eggs. Weird, eh? It sounds kinky but it’s not. After making it through, we had to run through a line where we were timed.I kept asking my teammates if the prizes were worth all the trouble. Someone told me the prize was soft drinks… Ugh!!!

Anyway Ms Hariet announced the winners after the staff lunch. Red got 3rd place and black got 2nd place… and much to our surprise, we got 1st place!!! We totally didn’t expect it. When she announced it, there was silence for a few moments before it finally dawned on us…

I don’t have the team photo, but Mr Pang has it and I assume he will give it to me later. Of course sometimes I make wrong assumptions (like how I assume the students in my class will do their homework) but anyway I can always twist his arm to give it to me.

When I saw the box, my friends and I guessed it must be an electrical item due to the “Jusco” wrapper. We made all sorts of guesses – blender/kettle/iron – except the correct one… Turns out to be a toaster =D At least it’s not just soft drinks.

Well at least that’s something, since I didn’t win any of the lucky draw prizes

Oh, and I also received the prize for being the champion of the staff club badminton mixed double games. Lest I sound great, I will confess now that I’m not. I totally suck at badminton. I’m just lucky that my partner was really good. Hehehe.

We each got… a TOWEL!!! Well besides the telematch, I did play a game of netball and my team lost badly. Partly my fault, because I hadn’t wanted to play and suggested Pn Eda (who’s a fantastic shooter), but then I got dragged in by the other team to play anyway. Hahaha.

I don’t have photos, but Richard Teo took some photos you can view here.

I camwhored a lot too. My camwhoring skills are improving a little Unfortunately I couldn’t take a photo with everyone. Too many people, too little time, and too little battery Photos available here.

Tune in for the next instalment of the Teacher’s Day Log. I will be blogging about all my lovely pressies from my students!

OK, not really a Japanese scholar…

My brother has been in Japan for the past two years studying medicine on scholarship. For the past two years, I’ve been kinda the only child at home (barring my younger sister who has Down’s Syndrome) which sounds a lot more fun than it is. With my older sister in UK and my brother in Japan, I’m the only child who has never studied overseas, and I’m the only one now for my parents to pick on all kinds of things, such as the late hours I stay out (not that I do that much), the mess in my room, when I was going to get married…

On the plus side, a lot of the space in the house is now mine to use. I took over my sister’s wardrobe, desk, and shelves; and after my maid left, I converted her room into my home office, and took over my one of my brother’s chest of drawers. So when my sister and bro do come back for good, I’d have to give up a lot of my space, and rather reluctantly I might add.

Well I’m not sure when my sister would be back, but my brother won’t be back for good for years, since he’s only just completed his first year in medicine (prior to that he had to take a one-year compulsory Japanese language course) and he would definitely want to do his housemanship after that. He’s back for one month for the holidays for now though and he hasn’t resented my taking over his chest of drawers; rather he was more pleased about the fact that he could use my broadband connection which he found rather fast. Odd. I find it rather slow. And he was in Japan, for Christ’s sakes – the land of super technology. Maybe after all my complaining, he had really low expectations, so the speed at which he could connect surpassed his expectations.

Anyway, his plane was due tonight, so my mother and I drove over to KLIA to pick him up. Mum had called the airport to find out what time his plane was due, and was informed about 7.50pm. However we were only ready to leave by 7.50pm because my brother had mistakenly told me it was due at 8.35pm and Mum didn’t make the call until 7.15pm. We didn’t rush though, because my brother would need time to collect his baggage and check out at the immigration.

We arrived about 8.40pm, and went to the arrival hall to look for him. He didn’t have a local handphone number so we couldn’t call him. As we were walking and looking at the hall for him, a guy suddenly came up to me, and it took me 2 seconds before I suddenly realised it was him. Goodness gracious, he looked so different!

Check out the photos below:

My brother and me – taken at the airport in 2006 before his departure

My brother and me – taken at the airport today after his arrival

A little rounder, with much longer hair… I guess in the photos he is recognizably the same, but in person he looked different to me, OK?!

What struck me most was that he still sounded the same. I mean, I’d have thought after being in Japan for 2 years he’d have picked some Japanese accent or other After all, my sister spoke with a British accent when I saw her after being in UK for a year; and my best friend Choon Meng spoke with (or more accurately, attempted to speak with) an Australian accent after being there for only half a year. And I have friends who never shed their [fake] Australian accent even though left Down Under years ago. But here was my brother, speaking as if he had never left Malaysia, with his usual high-speed chatter and the perfect Malaysian slangs thrown in all the right places.

He’s been in KL for less than 5 hours and he’s already off yamcha-ing with his high school buddies. He really hasn’t changed.