Week 2: Part (2) - ie Wedding Dinner

Day ?? (we lose track of days already) Wedding Dinner Day -1: Drama. No.no.you.don't.want.no.drama. Minor itch becomes an irritating one. Our wedding photo package includes 2 complimentary dinner dresses for YeeSin. Turns out that at the last minute the studio calls us, and and decides to take one of her dresses to a bridal show the next day!!! Needless to say. NOT HAPPY. So far, we've gotten them to commit to 5 larger selected prints. Then they call later, saying that they can't do the pre-scheduled makeup for YeeSin's mom because of the bridal show. YS's voice gets slightly more assertive on the phone. The studio says that everything is back on schedule now. Amazing what some volume enhancement on the cell will do. ;)

Wedding Day: Relieved that we are not doing the whole full-blown Chinese Wedding ++ ceremony, but only doing the Wedding Dinner only at the hotel. Hope that my CCF binge in the last few days doesn't prevent me from getting into my slacks! Makeup for YS and mom pass by without incident. The studio made a huge banner sized (3/4 lifesized) picture of the both of us to display at the waiting area. Will defintely look good on our front door back in KC! ;) Get back to the Evergreen Laurel hotel ballroom at 5:30pm (slightly behind schedule) for the Chinese Tea Ceremony. Lots of tea pouring and thank you's later, the main event starts in the ballroom.

The M/C makes the annoucement and we make our grand entrance. I've convinced the band to NOT play anything cheesy music, so they play "you & me" by Lifehouse instead. :) There's a huge spotlight by the red carpet shining directly into our faces (the kind that they shine on convicts in prison camps). We can't see past the lights, so we overshoot the carpet, and almost run into the light operator. We'll be forever remembered as the couple that overshot the red-carpet!!! Finally get to sit and the activities start... Food is served with great fanfare, and the band isn't too bad.... I speech from my dad, and myself later, we find ourselves YAM SENG'ing table by table, and not long after that its time to close down this party!! Finally get to sleep in our suite at 1am... tired.

Klang +1: Back in Klang already. Drove again for the first time after landing in Malaysia. Yeesin's job is to remind me to keep on the left lane at all times. I on the other hand try to drive as aggressively as I used to! Like Nick always says, same-same but different. Not a lot changed in Klang, but lots of stuff is different. My ACS Klang is still where it used to be, but a whole row of shoplots are now where we used to hang out after school! Will lepak for the next few days and go to Tioman on Wednesday.

Week 2: Part (1)

Day 14: MyKad @ Penang. The anticipation of having to deal with paperwork and bereauracy again is electrifying as we step into the building on Anson road in Penang. Our favorite anecdote is from my Penang uncle, describing how he didn't even recognize his own face on his Kad, even after multiple assurances from the photographer that everything was "Bagus" - ie, good. In truth, most MyKads did remotely resemble humans..., so we weren't very jazzed.
Maybe its the fact that its a weekday, or maybe its the fact that MyKads have a 10 RM fee now. The place was deserted. I mean as deserted as any government office can be!!! (ONLY 5 people in front of us. YES 5. We were BLOWN AWAY).

Day 15: Risk our lives to eat. The true test of how much you miss Malaysia (or rather Malaysian food is measured by how many lanes of highway you have to cross to eat it. For example, Hokkien mee is a 3 lane standard, followed by dodging motocyles and cars trying to order while driving through a gauntlet of vendors lining a 1 lane inner road. Coconut juice, on the other hand, I'll only cross 2 lanes at the most... On a more personal note, I've personally notched up 12 whole days of CCF for breakfast or dinner so far!

Week 1: Malaysian Oddysey

Wow, its been a week for us here already! 1 more week until the Wedding dinner, and 1/3 of the way through our current schedule! Here's a quick recap of the highlights of the week so far:

Day 1: Jet Lagged. Got off the plane at KLIA at 12:40pm. Tried to stroll past customs with our bags. They let Yeesin past without incident, but flagged me. I think they sensed the BENG in me. Instead of ruffling through our bags looking for contraband, they X-RAYed them ???!!! They let us go through, and we're too tired to complain... Got into Penang at 4pm, looked at samples of YS's photoshoot dresses. Finally get to sleep. :)

Day 2: Eat Chee Cheong Fun (CCF) for breakfast that morning. Maybe its me, but i recall CCF used to be a lot bigger portions. The same goes to the rest of the hawker food out there. Oh well, just ordered more of other food like Laksa, Penang mee to make up the difference. Forgot that napkins are not free, but stray cats are part of the eating experience. AHH... home. Rushed to the Photo Studio to pick dresses for YS's photo shoot + wedding dinner.

Day 4: Photoshoot day. Woke up at the crack of dawn (actually at 9.30am, but felt like crack of dawn. My other half likes to sleep in.) YS and I got made up by Barry, our slightly wrist-challenged make-up artist for about 1 hr. Barry made YS look like someone I don't recognize, and gave me a very nifty double eyelid for my left eye. Didn't help the enlarge the sizing of my eyes, just made one larger than the other! Started driving out for the photoshoot with our one man team (photographer, tour guide, and expert aggressive driver) Garry. He used to photoshoot for professional models, so he must have found me hard to work with. I mean, the man can only do so much, can't squeeze water out of stone. Let just say that he wasn't holding back comments when shooting. "Bo Sui (Ugly)", "Tau Gai (Uneven eyes)", "Been Bui" (Fat Face) were common words... YES. No holding back. A beach, a lonely forest road, and a bank later (Yes outside STandard Chartered Bank in Downtown Penang), we were back in the studio for the remaining wardrobe changes. By 8pm, we are finally dONE!! I leave the studio with my fingers crossed, maybe they will make me look good. And NO. That pic is not a shot of us... Just an idea of what we might look like. ;)

Day 6: Pick Pictures for photoshoot. We're sitting at the studio trying to figure out how to choose 21 shots paid for in the package from about 100 shots in the contact sheet. Garry & Barry did good, bruised ego aside I didn't look too bad. YS OBVIOUSLY looked great. Figured out that we'd have to give in to the scam and pay up for more pictures @ 80 RM per picture, chose to print 25 shots. They even included a huge flag-like banner to display at our wedding dinner. We'll bring that banner back and put it on our front door next halloween. I think my pasty white face will work for scaring the neighborhood kids. :)

Come Fly with Us...

Here we are at the MCI airport, waiting to board our plane. Apparently we don't need 2 hour buffer to check-in at the airport. This place is like ghost town, no one else, but a small crowd milling about. I mean, who lives here in KC anyways, I mean there's nothing out here but cows and grass!! Speaking of cows... we saw a huge bull infront of a store on the way here. Kyle was asking "what's that?" and our Miss Blur happily answered that it was a "Bull's Ass"!!! LOL. (incidentally she was right coz the ass was facing us). BTW, thanks to them for dropping us off at the airport today.
Here we are, at the expedia.com cafe hanging out, and start our trip with a bottle of beer. We won't be operating heavy machinery anyways, might as well get liquored up for the LOOOOONG flight ahead. Cheers... We will be in our small tight confined area while the rest of you all have a comfy bed to sleep in. :)

Packing Odyssey - CWD

Our Chinese-Wedding-Dinner (CWD) trip is just a few days away, so we are busy busy getting ready. If you can believe it, we have managed to put a whole room full of candies, snacks, gifts, etc into 3 large check in bags! We even have space left over for our own stuff.
We have pretty much closed the door for any more stuff, as the maximum weight limit has been hit (44 pounds for Cathay Pacific) on our check in luggage.
For the next couple of days, we'll be going over our checklist of stuff to bring again... probably won't post again until we get back!!!