Hat Yai

23rd – 25th April 2011
This is one random trip that my friends and I booked spontaneously. Since I’ve never been there, and most of us are a little stressed up, I thought let’s just go! We stayed at Lee Gardens Plaza Hotel. The elevator stinks, the room stinks and the lobby stinks. Will never stay there again, there are plenty more pleasant hotels nearby. But it is very convenient with shopping complexes just next door.

Shopping for stuff like mangoes, dried mangoes, cashew nuts are much more reasonable than back home. But a challenge to carry them back. Oh Swensen’s ice cream is MUCH cheaper there too. Yes, yes, how can I forget the beers.

The city is dusty but the food was great - definitely need to get a little further from the hotels as those too near ALWAYS overcharge tourist. We got around a lot with the “tuk-tuk” local taxis. It is challenging for me as other than Thai, the locals only speak hokkien. I can understand the dialect but totally can’t speak it. Wished my family spoke more dialects.

Dive Trip 2

15th – 18th April 2011
Advanced Certification!

Can’t believe it’s been almost 9 months since my 1st dive. I was very determined to do a second dive last year but I changed job and being so new in the role, there was never a suitable time to take leave.

This trip, I gathered people and ensure it was a slightly longer trip than last year. It’s Tenggol Island again but there is just so much to explore there! Together with my buddy Tee Hui, I got Sam, Mark, Karen and Sakti on this trip. We also met Douglas and Chee Wai who were doing their advanced certification with us.

We were delayed on our journey there so we reached pretty late at Mayang Sari, Dungun.

Photo by Soo

Day 1
2 Dives
When we reached the island, we were separated by leisure divers and those taking the advanced certification. And the comedy begins. Funny story 1: Douglas descended with his snorkel! Yea, guess he thought he didn’t need air until he started to drink some water. Funny story 2: Chee Wai fell asleep drinking milk! That was a classic sight, would have been a great photo to post but we didn’t manage to take in time.

Day 2
3 Dives + 1 Night Dive
Sam was suppose to perform out of air with any one of us and she chose Chee Wai under water. To everyone’s surprise, she tapped him on the shoulder and he took a slight look and swam away! Ever since that, he is dubbed the runaway-buddy. Apparently he didn't see anyone. Haha. Guess the only thing he saw were these beautiful "Christmas trees".

Photo by Soo

After a few dives I feel I have so much better control of movements underwater. Happiness. Diving with current was interesting. You practically get pushed pretty far even with minimum movement. When we did night dive, it wasn’t as scary as I thought. Torch lights very much lighted up the whole place. But we MUST have another funny story so... Chee Wai was out of air within a few minutes after descending. He showed his pressure level going up and down as he inhale and exhale. Of course with our instructor Soo’s expertise, he found Chee Wai’s tank not fully opened. During this dive, we saw a very rarely spotted flat worm! It’s beautiful!

Photo by Chee Wai

It was a tiring day! So we slept pretty early. Half way through the night, someone started speaking in teochew! I thought it was a one off and soon it became almost conversational. :-p I found my buddy sleep talking.

Day 3
3 Dives
It was our 1st deep dive to a ship wreck! Before I know it, Soo was pointing to my right and there was it, a ship wreck. It’s really cool as many type of fish just swims around it. Did any of us experienced nitrogen narcosis? Nope. We were even emotional and heart broken when Soo said we failed. As we ascend to do our safety stop, we took some photos. Chee Wai passed his camera to Soo and somehow he didn’t loop the holder on his hand. We watched as the camera floated up and Soo not realizing it told Chee Wai to stay when he attempt to swim up to get it. It was only after Soo tried to use his camera that he realised it was missing! Thank God we found the camera floating nearby.

On our 2nd dive, we were all a little down as we wanted to attempt another deep dive the next morning to pass our certification but Soo said there wasn’t sufficient time. He had to rub it in by telling us he has never failed so many candidates at one trip before. Sigh. We saw a lot of fish on this dive – huge batfish and angel fish and was chasing after them to take photos.

Before our 3rd dive, he finally broke the news. It was another one of his con joke and we ALL fell for it. Sigh, that’s our instructor. I get to launch the sausage for our safety stop. Haha. Yes I am excited about every little thing I learned.

That night, my buddy spoke in her sleep again, this time in English... and coincidently Chee Wai got up to use the washroom. I'm sure he was pretty shocked!

Day 4
Saying goodbye to the staff and Tenggol island is hard. On our boat ride back to mainland, we were stopped by marine police. How embarrassing! Most of us naughty folks were not wearing life jackets. We got away with a warning. :-p

Charge Up! Conference 2011

17th – 20th March 2011

It’s our annual church geek gathering! :-p
No no no, it’s the cool bunch gathering! We had great sharing by Choon Ean, Grace, Alex, Louis, Kee Sitt and lots of other industry experts. This year, I had small part. I get to share on how we use our digital mixer M7CL for stage monitoring. ;-)

Still amazed at how much sweat and tears put in by the team. It is incredible how you all function well even after all the sleepless nights. Salute!

2012 is our Sabbath year, so we won’t be having a Charge Up! Conference. Instead, the Livewire! team will take a break for Sabbath Summit. There will be Bolt Youth Media Camp though. Dates TBC.

Sales Conference 2011

Team Building at Hard Rock Penang
18th – 20th February 2011

Almost the whole company as well as our contract staff get to go for this trip. Glad everyone get to enjoy the place. It’s a pretty hotel. The ground floor rooms opens to the pool. We had a number of team building games and that was fun. We were a noisy large group. Hope we didn’t spoil it for the other guests.

Love all details of music on door handles, room names, posters photos all over the hotel. Hey, it’s Hard Rock Hotel!

Getaway at Morib

13th – 15th February 2011
This was a last minute planned get away since Sam and Chin Yee booked the accommodation but Fui Ping had some urgent things to get done. Thought that a break would be great since I haven’t had much rest lately, well, ever since I started this new job, it’s been a little crazy.

We stayed at the chalets in Impian Morib Hotel. The place was surprisingly well maintained. The place was clean and very quiet indeed considering it was a long weekend. It was great caused we practically had the whole place to ourselves. We didn’t do much but watch movie and ate lots of seafood.

But do take note, although it is beach front, I personally won’t advice anyone swimming there. The water is really filthy.

It is still one relaxing-lazy trip!

KA Team Building

18th-19th November 2010
Adeline’s Villa

Jumping into a new working environment and new role is scary but I truly treasure the learning opportunities. So glad for this trip because it will definitely help build a stronger team. After our offsite meeting, we were off to Adeline’s Villa in Gopeng.

We were welcomed by Adeline herself as we arrive at the villas in the late evening. It’s a quiet and pretty place. We had a little chat with her about how she started up with the place with just RM5000 and a lot of discouraging advices. She is truly a determined lady. She finds great pleasure in cooking and watching her guests enjoy her cooking.

Some of the villas can fit up to 10 people so we occupied 3 units. The place is pretty well maintained and very new part of her resort. The older part of the resort (Adeline’s Rest House) does not have attached bathrooms and air conds – which will probably have a much closer to nature feel.

The next day was fun-filled with activities. We had white water rafting in the morning. Yes, since I was here in 2009, I knew we had to do water confidence. Water was a little cold in the morning but that just adds to the thrill! Had a blast screaming all the way.

After water rafting, we were back at the resort and this time for paintball! My very first game. Someone came up with the idea to do girls vs boys. Did I mention there were 10 ladies and 5 guys?! We had 3 games and most of us got shot or ran out of bullets too fast. But the last 2 games, I was the last one standing! Because of that they guys blamed me for causing large bruises on them. To finish off our pellets, we had target practice. I hit my target after barely 5 attempts. It’s was far. I’m proud to say, I think I’ve found one of my gifts.

Quek See Chiang

My maternal grandfather passed away on the 3rd September 2010. He was 98 years and 8 months old.

He was a respectable headmaster in Muar many years ago. It's amazing that a student actually still remembers him.

He fell sick just a few weeks ago and deteriorated very quickly. He stopped recognizing his family for about 2 years ago but was always healthy, no major sickness and could eat solid food until the recent weeks.

It's sad that I barely know him, don't even recall exchanging more than 100 words with him in my entire lifetime. But I thankful that 6 years ago, he came to know God and was baptised. I'll be seeing him again soon.

Here's a little mention about his contribution to his school.

"Pada tahun 1949, Encik Quek See Chiang telah dilantik sebagai guru besar mengantikan Encik Ng Kim Seah. Di bawah pentadbiran beliau, sekolah ini terus berkembang maju sehinggalah pada tahun 1952, sekolah ini mendapat sebahagian daripada bantuan kerajaan.

Memandangkan sekolah ini kian lama kian maju dan bilangan murid terus bertambah dari masa ke semasa, maka Ahli Lembaga Pengurus sekolah telah berusaha dengan bersungguh-sengguh mendapatkan bantuan dan derma-derma daripada penduduk tempatan bagi membina bangunan sementara. Pada tahun 1952, bangunan yang diperlukan itu dapat didirikan di alamat sekarang. Bangunan baru ini membelanjarkan sebanyak Rm 24,000.00. Pada tahun 1956, bangunan baru ini dapat digunakan .

Pada tahun 1958, sekolah ini diluluskan sebagai sekolah bantuan penuh. Pada tahun 1962, Kementerian Pendidikan telah memulakan pendidikan percuma, ini telah meringankan beban Lembaga Pengurus Sekolah dan ibubapa.

Pada tahun 1970, kementerian Pendidikan telah mendirikan sebuah kantin dan sebuah bilik muzik. Murid-murid tua sekolah juga membina sebuah gelanggang bola keranjang pada tahun 1973.

Mula tahun 1972 hingga 1985, sekolah ini telah menjadi johan berturut-turut sebanyak 10 kali dalam perlawanan bola keranjang peringkat MSSM bahagian sekolah rendah, iaitu tahun 1972, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982 dan 1985. Peristiwa ini juga merupakan zaman kegemilang sekolah ini, kerana dengan memperolehi johan sebanyak 10 kali, maka menjadikan sekolah ini terkenal dalam seluruh negara maupun Singapura. Bilangan murid juga meningkat kemucak dengan melebihi 500 orang setiap tahun masa ketika.

Pada tahun 1977, guru besar En. Quek See Chiang bersara. Tempat beliau diambil alih oleh En. Wong Khoon Chuan bagi menjalankan tugas sekolah ini. Pada 1hb. April 1978, tugas guru besar diambil alih oleh En. Sia Sung Hing."

Dew Crew Retreat 2010

29th - 31st August 2010
Independence Day has almost become a fixed date for our retreat since we always need to be around every weekend. This year's trip was to have team building event at Countryview Recreation Park, Jeram Besu.

We had sharing and devotion sessions together, hung out at the farm...I mean resort and we did super fun stuff like abseiling twice, flying fox thrice AND 4WD to waterfall! It was almost like a roller coaster ride. We also did emo karaoke session, guesstures and taboo.

All photos by Monica Lee

By the time we got back, we were tired, bruised but we brought back lots of photos and great fun memories. Such a great bunch of people to be stuck with for 3 days :) Love you all!

Sharing church audio experience

It has been a pretty hectic 3 days.

Just 2 weeks ago, MWM asked if I could join them in their trip to Penang First AOG where they would conduct Worship workshops. They requested for a special workshop for the sound crew. I'm not professionally trained (though trained by a professional ;-p) and I'm not technically savvy! OK, so I found out they wanted to know more about operational stuff, process and some basic mixing. I thought I could managed so I agreed to go.

It was a nice to be able to share my years of experience as a volunteer. It wasn't something that I was capable to do on my own. This whole audio stuff knowledge is really a blessing from God. I'm still learning but it is great to offer some suggestion to the challenges that we have experience before.

Enjoyed the past 3 hectic days. Had great company, great food and some great sharing of God's love and grace. :D

To Canada

Met Steven one last time before he leaves for Toronto in the afternoon today. It's sad to see him go. He has been our crew leader for the longest time. Maybe 8 years? It seems that all our crew leader eventually leave for places that are further and further. First Uncle Ker had to leave because he was posted to Ipoh, then Chun Wai had to leave for work in Philippines and now Steven is going to the super far Canada.

It's probably God's blessing for their faithfulness in serving that they receive such posting and job offers.
Gonna miss you Steven. Thank God for Whatsapp, we can still communicate! Hehe.

Thanks for the stuff that we sapu-ded from your house late at night :-p

180° Musical

16th - 18th July 2010
We haven't really done musical for a while now. I personally feel that this is one of DUMC's better production since The Peace Child. Maybe it's simply because I like musicals. It's a great combined effort by Punctuation together with a large number of youths in the team, singing, dancing and acting.

It was the first time we took EVERYTHING off the auditorium stage. Thanks to our media staff for efficiently labeling everything and some Men in Black's muscle help, we got it done pretty quickly. It was also the 1st time we used so many mics! A total of 12 headset mics (of 2 which were required swapping/shared), 1 wireless handheld and 7 wired handhelds. By God's grace, no clashing of signals! We had a 4 piece band off stage as well. *Whew* We ran 4 cameras with one on roaming, moving heads and 2 followspots. It's a pretty big team to pull this off but seriously, I serve with an AMAZING team. Such a great blessing from God. :)

Kah Wei & Zong Ming

17th July 2010
Kah Wei is one of my few schoolmates that I continued to keep in touch with for the past 12 years. When she told me she was getting married, I was certain that I would like to be there :-p

I thought I was going to have to choose between it and the 180 musical which is over the same weekend 16-18 July. It was a signing of certification of marriage and a lunch reception. Just that it is in Singapore! But somehow God made it possible. :) I prayed that God will enable me to juggle my time as I feel that it would really mean something to Kah Wei for some friends to be there. At the same time, I was really looking forward to this musical.

I managed to get a budget flight via Firefly to fly in from Subang in the morning and return late afternoon. Everything went on smoothly just as planned and thank God there was no delay. Tee Hui, Shin Hui and Wen Fue drove to Singapore the day before so I met them at the Studio M Hotel for breakfast and to hang out before getting a ride to the Mykii Cafe.

It was a simple and meaningful reception with close friends and family. Something different from the usual huge Chinese weddings. 3 course western/greek food in a nice cozy restaurant where the bride and groom actually have time for their guests and actually get to enjoy the food too! :)

Kah Wei & Zong Ming, congrats and thank you for sharing this very special day with me.

Only 8 Months

It has only been only 8 months since I bought my 1st phone but I bought a little computer today. I am blessed with one at an amazing price because I have been ranting a lot about not getting one. :-p

It's going to be a bit of work learning how to use this. :)

My 1st Dive Trip - Tenggol Island

10th-13th June 2010

After all the difficulty of finding the best weekend for the trip, we finally went!

Teresa, Chen Way, Jia Yi, Tee Hui and myself were candidates for the OWD while, Michelle, Pinky and Alex were leisure divers. We met at MRR2 McD's before we began our journey to Dungun around 8.15pm. It was a pleasant drive with clear weather. By buddy was great at entertaining me throughout the drive. Just quite a bit of road kills remains on my car (don't worry, just insects). We arrived at Mayangsari Resort around 1am only to find the key card don't quite work for our room. I was going to destroy the key by using too much force. Thank God we had Way who somehow opened up the switch to make it work. The reception ppl won't be much of any help at that hour.

Together with Divemaster Nicole and our Instructor Soo, we left for Tenggol Island excited and just couldn't wait to jump into the waters. :) We stayed in the center resort - Tenggol Island Beach Resort. We were supposed to repeat most stuff that we have learned in confined water. Some were easier and some were more difficult to execute in sea water. We only did 2 dives but most of us were quite tired from it.

The resort's food was pretty good. Love the rendang and spicy chilly sauce. We even had desserts during tea time, barley and red bean!

We managed another 4 dives the next day. I didn't feel tired. Well, I'm usually very energize when I'm on a holiday. We saw so many corals and fishes. We were pretty lucky we get to see a turtle as well. I was told that visibility was a little poor so we can't see that much further but it is this condition that the whale shark loves to come out. One has been spotted. Somebody even managed to take a photo of it from the boat. They are very shy so they usually swim away pretty quickly when spotted.

I was attacked during my last dive. By a trigger fish. I remembered I thought I hit something quite hard with my fins. The 2nd time it felt like a pulled. But being blur me, I didn't see anything. Of course the next thing I saw was Soo, so I figured he was pulling my leg. It was only after we surfaced and confirmed by Nicole that I believe. :-p It would have been a terrible end for me since the trigger fish has teeth strong enough to crush corals. Apparently we passed it's nest and I was a little to near causing it to go crazy.

It was a fun group to dive with especially with our shark, I mean instructor. He's always trying to drown me on the surface, pull Tee Hui off the boat ladder and he absolutely love to hug Way. :-p Some of the girls called him Way's second wife! Haha. Think he observed Way is always so super sweet to Jia Yi :-p

Can't wait for my next trip. Yes, we are all certified :) but I need some extra practice.

Calvin & Jing Yee

5th June 2010
My younger brother and his girlfriend of 13 years finally got married. We had the traditional Chinese Wedding Tea Ceremony yesterday. I don't recall my house being packed up with so many relatives and friends before!

A simple wedding dinner was held at Bangsar Seafood Garden Ballroom. This is a great place to have weddings. The ballroom is impressive, the food is great AND they have Saroj, the AV guy who can do live switching with the little CCTV cameras. It helps when you are blocked by pillars.

Thank God for great friends. My brother and sister's friends were very very supportive, sporting, generous and helpful in every possible way. Lots of thing would not have been possible without them :) Oh yes, I have a sister now.

Photo by Olivia

Friends

Friends are truly God's blessings.

As we prepare for my brother's wedding tomorrow, I continue to witness the greatness of friendship. Friends will be there for you
when you are down
when you need an extra brain
when you need a ride even it is far or inconvenient
when you need talents, gifts, skills you don't have
when you need extra love and care

They will lend you
their precious toys (expensive gadgets)
their money even though you didn't ask
their luxury cars even though their not in town

Friends, you are the greatest. :D

Global Day of Prayer

Just had a great opportunity to serve with my favourite people - techies under Livewire! for Global Day of Prayer. Glad to have my sifu around this time too. The day before was Run for the Nation where people all over our country run for 5km and pray for our nation. :) The Klang Valley churches gathered to pray at Shah Alam, Stadium Malawati. It was probably the largest gathering of believers for a prayer meeting. It's great to witness the many people praying for our beloved nation. Looks like there is still hope here.

Photo by Choon Ean

KK with Colleagues

13th-17th April 2010
Yes, I was in KK again. It's my 5th trip. Since I don't travel much, this is probably my most visited state.

Glad that we had the opportunity to visit Sabah as part of our Team Building + Meetings + Training. I simply love Sabah. To me, it's the most beautiful part of Malaysia. We have to admit that Malaysia always brand ourselves with all things East Malaysia.

We stayed at the beautiful Nexus Resort & Spa. Nope we didn't have spa. Neither did we have much time to even enjoy the pool or the 6km private beach. Wish we did cause I suspect I won't be able to afford to stay there. Plus, I don't like the idea of being so far away from KK town or even the nearest mall. It's pretty inconvenient unless you only want to hide in the resort. Love the quietness of the resort though. Oh and there is free wifi almost everywhere! We also had a nice BBQ dinner (well, we had chef to do the work, we just ate) by the beach.

On the 1.5 day of team building, we crammed in time to Kinabalu Park and Poring Hot Spring & Canopy Walk. The Canopy Walk was changed to much shorter than it originally was last year. It was a very long drive away so we kinda spend quite a lot of time in the bus. Some of the guys managed to kill time by gambling and losing lots of money to each other! We had a short walk in Philipino market in KK town. Had our telematch (team building) on Sapi island - terribly organised by some clueless duo who think they were funny. Glad we managed to have a short snorkeling session before lunch - a little too short. But the place was getting polluted. Lots of trash in the water.

Managed to catch up with Eric and Mun Yee. Met Nora as they were preparing for their trip to interior Sabah. They sacrificially drove me back to my-far-away resort twice. Had the great privilege to sit in Mun Yee's new (still covered with plastics) car! Hehe.

Hopefully I'll get to dive on my next trip to Sabah!

Dew Leaders

Today, we planned a special dew gathering as a little farewell for Steven who will be migrating to Canada in July, Debbie who is moving on from full time church media and Monica for her 10th year as a full time church media staff. Since we had most of the crew around, it kind of turn into an appreciation for leaders and full time staff. Choon Ean made a folder for each of us and had all the crew signed on them. Oh, we also took the opportunity to celebrate her birthday!

Photo by Monica

Steven is the longest serving Dew Crew Head of Ministry. I can't even remember when but it must have been at least 8 faithful years or more. We have been through so many events, hours, and challenging times together in this ministry. He has always been there when we needed help or simply listen to (my) grumbles. It's going to be very different without him around. :(

I am happy for Debbie that God has called her to do new things in life. So glad that she will return to crew to serve as a volunteer. It is a reminder that God has a plan for every chapter of our lives.

Monica's 10th year in ministry is significant mark. It is rare for to find a long serving media staff but she has made it. :) We pray that God will continue to use her to create beautiful masterpiece for His glory.

New Adventure - Diving!

Always wanted to dive. I wanted to dive 12 years ago. I didn't even know how to swim then. In 2000, I decided to take swim course to fulfill this dream. This isn't the cheapest hobby around. Just couldn't afford diving then. Not like I'm currently earning much more than when I first started working but I figured if I waited any longer, it would remained a dream forever.

During my Sabah trip for Mount Kinabalu climb last year, I managed to squeeze in sometime and tried Discover Scuba at Sapi Island - sort of a trial for people who may be interested to take up Dive Course. It was a little terrifying then but very exciting too! After that trip last year, I want to make effort to try something different/new/adventurous or at least make a short trip annually. I think it would help keep me sane.

Finally signed up for the Open Water Diver Course with Global Scuba that Chen Way recommended. One of the main reason for signing up for with Global was that they provide unlimited pool sessions till the students are ready for the real thing. Oh, they had a promotion at the same time as well.

Tee Hui and I had our 1st lesson today at Selangor Polo Club today. We were there from 10am-7pm and in that duration complete all 5 modules of the pratical session for confined water. We are not that confident yet so will be going back for another round of practice plus another session for theory and test. After that, we will be all set for the island! Yipee!