"Visitors from Japan"

We had some visitors from our Japanese counterparts over the past 2 weeks. Communication (language) was at times funny as both sides were trying to guess what the other is saying! Only their manager can speak fluent (more or less) English.

Here, at the end of their visit, they invited us to Kampachi for dinner. Hopefully we've hinted enough to them to request our boss to send us to Japan for any follow-up issues! ;)

"ATR Teambuilding 2011: Cycling @ Georgetown!"

This year's dept teambuilding is a rather unique one: cycling tour of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Penang! We started at 8AM and it didn't take long to reach the first stop, Chew Jetty:

A long walk to the end, where we can see the jetty. I don't know if it was me or what, but I was sweating buckets that early in the morning!

Next up, Cheah Kongsi:

We had a tour leader who was giving a lot explanation about the history of each places and the significance, but I wasn't really paying attention becoz of the sweltering heat and at the same time, trying to snap some pics :P

Like this one... hehe.. framing up the picture using the barriers, to give it a sense of depth...


Our bicycles parked..


Everyone was crowding at this tree... must be very valuable becoz it was chained!


ah.. some figures close-up


After that was a well-needed stop for breakfast! The heat was really getting to me... and had to wear these safety jackets some more...


Next:


These places are great for snapping photos. Here I have my favourite model #1 to pose for me... hahaa...


Another pic to showcase the 'framing' effect... did it work? u be the judge!

Favourite model #2.. Ok, u can see clearly I wasn't paying attention to whatever the tour guide was saying becoz I can't describe what are the places we stopped. The routine is like, u cycle a few hundred metres through the heritage part of the city and stop. What's nice is that u get to zigzag around the maze of inner roads that are very difficult to access by cars. There are shortcuts everywhere!

Ok, this I remember.. it's one of the last places where handmade joss-sticks are produced by an old man...



Our last stop is the Nyonya house. If it looks familiar, it's becoz we took our wedding photos here! :D


Ok, back to the starting point and return the bicycle. It's a rather different type of teambuilding, I must say...

But the highlight (and reward for all the hard work) is of course, lunch at E&O Hotel!



Favourite model #3.... haha..

Bike rental costs RM60++, corporate rate. Check out their website, probably they can do a better job explaining the World Heritage Sites!

"Sharon's Farewell"

Aii... another fren's farewell... again at Nando's.


LS, Doris, Leo, SA and Sharon



As Doris said, Sharon gave us a lot of memorable laughter! Take care over in US, ya!

"Technical Symposium 2011 @ Hotel Equatorial"

This year, I had a slot for poster showcase... well, it's better than having to give oral presentation like last time. Especially since my lady boss took all the questions fielded! :P

while I stood around waiting to take pics! Muaahhhaa



EQ's lunch sucked big time though... :(

"Farewell BL!"

First farewell of the year... goes to BL! And in tradition of our group, we will have multiple farewells... which means food all week :P

Farewell Part 1 @ TGI Queensbay

My order... Noticed how unattractive it is? Tastes okay, but this Tennessee Chicken is sort of a replacement of the old Jack Daniels Chicken.. I wouldn't recommend it though.. in fact, I think after this meal, we ban TGI dy.. the food quality is poor..

Farewell Part 2 @ DOME

This is the "official" farewell, with the bosses... no pics though... food is pretty much the same, except the prices have all been increased :(

Farewell Part 3 @ QB Food court



This is the cost-effective farewell... with ex-Modo colleagues.

Good luck at your new place pal!

"Promotion Lunch @ Dragon-i"

1) Relieved to be *finally* promoted



2) Happy to have frens to celebrate it with me



3) SA, CF, SF, Doris, Leo, SH, BL, AL



4) I like this background more... but why Doris stand so far la...

5) Err.. guys, you should've told me my hair was messy...! :P

"Teambuilding @ Star Cruise Pisces!"

Firstly, sorry for the lack of posts over the past few weeks! The Raya holidays and subsequent work weeks took a lot of my time and put the posts which I had in mind into a growing backlog. Hope to get to these soon, but you never know what might pop up at the last minute.

Anyways, let me start with the department teambuilding activity, this time is on board the Star Cruise Pisces! And best of all, it's free and easy, i.e. no activities planned :D I always find such activities (split into a group and play some games) to be rather tiresome and are poor attempts to actually team-build. Ok, lets get to the story~~

Boarding time at 6PM. Quite a rush as we left office at 4.30PM and I wanted to take a shower at home before boarding.


Lifeboats

Upon check-in, they will give you an access card to your room and for any billing. But you had to surrender your IC for safekeeping. And look at my room. Gosh. So small. The top can even be pulled down to be a double-decker room. And the washroom is also super-small, like on a plane :-S

Already starving, we placed our bags and headed to the buffer dinner. Dinner and the next morning's breakfast are provided as part of the package (I think costs RM150).

Food. Not much to choose, and it's more like economy rice. But we gobbled it down anyways!

After eating, we head to the live band show. Kinda boring until the next activity: Lingerie models from China! I saw alot of people spraying blood that night.. and I'm no exception! :P

After that, it was pretty much on your own. So we roamed around the ship from deck to deck to check out what was interesting... And there wasn't much honestly. The main attraction is the casinos but since I don't really gamble, I wandered around hoping to use this opportunity to exercise my D3000! Luckily I found a few "volunteers" to be my model :D

Nice dome


Walked outside...


SF and LP


Timer shot

I wasn't the only one who brought an DSLR along. Check out these other colleagues, armed with all manner of lenses and flashes!

One of my favourite shots: Caught Zoe's reflection on the wall :D


At the top deck..


Zoe very excited it seems!


Another of my fav shot...

Shooting at night with little light has always been my biggest fear. And using a DSLR is no different. The last thing you wanna do is to turn on the flash and obliterate all the subtle lighting, so I switched to Manual mode. After a few trials, it looks like this one can do the trick! However, the picture still turned out fuzzy and dark when downloaded on the computer, so I used GIMP to sharpen and tune the colors. Some might scorn at using software to fix the picture, but if it can save or enhance the picture, why not?

Radar turning

The rest of the night was spent Karaoke-ing, chatting and hanging out in the casino. By 2AM, I was dead tired and decided to retire. Some of the other stayed up all night whether at the bar, spa-ing, massaging, etc. My bed was uncomfortable and small and it was very cold. And my room mate was nowhere in sight throughout the night :P After turning and flipping about on my bed, the alarm rang. It was 5.45AM;time to catch sunrise!

Quite a crowd had build up... and many of them also hoping to catch sunrise on camera!

But it was a cloudy day, so not so lucky! It's still a nice experience though, albeit freezing cold!

As the ship goes closer, we can see Penang island dy...


"To Frontier and beyond!"

After that we had breakfast and checked-out. By then the ship has docked and we left Swettenham Pier. Friday was unofficially an "off-day" to recover... I think all of us need it!