In KL

Back to office, today my boss is on training, so it's not busy at all *big grin*. So I'm going to write about my experience during the past one and a half week on training at KL.

Sunday, July 10, 2005:
The night before I left, I played games at Nexus with my friends John, Imam, Kustini (Imam's gf), and Marcus. I played with John until 5.30 am, then we went home. I was so tired. I went straight to bed to sleep until 11 am. Then my big sister started to yell to wake me up (her shrieking voice woke me up instantly). Oh god... I still haven't made the preparation for leaving! I was helped by my big sister to pack (yeah, she tried to help, but she just made it slower).

Then me and my sisters (Amanda and Shishi) went to the airport to drop me and also to meet my parents that will also arrived on Jakarta. I met Helmi and Ditto at the airport. I still could meet my dad for 10 minutes in KFC. Then I should go. My mom will arrived in the next hour but I don't have much time left.

One and a half hour in the plane, we arrived at KL International Airport. Looking confused, we were approached by a man with a tie and nice suit then he asked us where we stay, then he helped Helmi with his traveling bag. But as he took us to a transportation company, we reluctantly agreed to use Mercedez to go to our hotel and back to airport (two-way trip) with 300 rm payment in advance. Since that moment, we often used "two-way" word to make fun of ourselves that had been easily tricked!

The first night there I tried 'nasi lemak' (yummy) in a place near the office and order 'ice kosong' (haha they know this word as I suspected). Ditto was quite surprised. Along our way back to hotel, he wore a step measurement device that could count how may steps we make when we walk or run, what a strange useless device!


Monday, July 11, 2005:
I overslept. My phone alarm was set wrong because of the time difference. Not having breakfast, I rushed go to the Schlumberger office at Rohas Perkasa street. My two friends were already there (yeah, what a great friends hehehe). When I arrived there, all of the trainee has sit nicely and waiting for the class to begin. The class finally started at 09.30 (grrr if I've known that, I would have had a nice breakfast first in hotel). Then the boring class started... It's about Linux cluster something.

Skip the boring part...

Everyday we tried something new to eat. Then on the night, we went to KLCC mall (Petronas twin tower) and ate at a Thailand cafe. I'm not quite fond of the northern asian food (Thai, Myanmar, Korean, Japan), they have a strange concept of what's a good taste is. But Helmi seems very willing to try it so we go anyway. I tried their special menu 'tomyam' with noodles that taste funny, bah...

Tuesday, July 12, 2005:
I've received notification from my mobile phone that my international roaming function has been activated. It means I could send SMS now haha... Today we went to KL tower by foot. It's one of the tallest buildings in the world. It's quite far from our hotel (Crowne Plaza), so we walked for 30 minutes I think. We watched sunset there. Then rain started to fall. We walked in the rain. Helmi got sick that day.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005:
We went to China town today. I bought two watches for my greedy big sister. It's very cheap because it's not original. Then it's raining again. We tried Indian food, I like the spicy flavor of Indian food, it's very tasty, nyum... Ditto ordered the same food as I did, I think we have a common food selection (we both very very like junk food like KFC, McD, but Ditto always say that he only like a subset of food that I like... yeah right). Ditto spotted that there's 4 McD and KFC around the China Town haha...

Thursday, July 14, 2005:
We made a reservation on Awana hotel, Genting highland for this weekend. We were very excited to go to Genting. It's the recommended hotel by Ditto's sister. In the evening, Helmi got worsed. I went to Times Square with Ditto. We both watched 3D movie in IMAX. It's titled Haunted Castle. We felt the objects seem to be in front of us. During the movie, I saw Ditto trying to 'reach' the objects with his hand with no luck. We ate fried rice that day. It's became our favorite meal.

Friday, July 15, 2005:
The training suddenly finished. Why?? But I don't care. It's Genting that's what keep my interest now. That evening, the three of us went to Law Yet plaza that sell cheap computer stuff. I bought HP Office Jet 2550 that have phone, fax, printer, scanner, copier built-in for only 500 rm. Ditto felt sorry that he didn't bring his broken handphone, the sparepart price was just half the price as in Indonesia. We watched another 3D movie in IMAX about a girl that feels like she was in a jungle with real dinosaurs when she visited her father's office in the museum. What a lunatic girl... We ate the same fried rice again. It's so spicy, tasty, with a very fried chicken that crunch at every bite in your mouth, aaargh...

Saturday, July 16, 2005:
The fun day has arrived!!! Too bad, Helmi got worse again. He can't join us to Genting. So Ditto and I went to Bird Park in the morning in hope that Helmi will get better in the afternoon. We were dissapointed to find there's very few kind of birds there. The ad said it's largest bird park in Asia (yeah right!). The only strange kind of bird there is 'burung onta'.

We ate in a restaurant in Bird Park. I ordered "Mie Mamak" (Mother's noodles haha). We went back to Hotel, but Helmi said he doesn't feel well. But Ditto and myself were already very much like to experience the cold weather and the natural forest and trees in Awana. So we went to Genting anyway. We took monorail from hotel, then switched to Putra RLT to Gombak. Then we took a bus that would take us directly to Genting Theme Park. We arrived at 6 pm.

In Genting Theme Park, I took Sky Ride, a ride that makes us experience how to feel like superhero flying around with great speed. It took us up, down, twirl, spin horizontal, vertical. It definitely not comfortable to be Superhero flying around!! Too bad the other two persons beside me don't scream, so I just hold my scream in my stomach. Ditto was having fun shooting me with my camera while I hold my breath forcing my scare down. He just laughed and said no when I forced him to try this "joyful" ride (hey that's not fair). Then we went into Snow world. So this is how snow feels like! I took snow games, riding down a snow path using a big rubber tires. But this time I forced Ditto first. Haha now he looked scared as hell wakakak...

Then we took Awana Skyway, a cable car that took us straight to a station very near to the hotel. There's already a shuttle bus waiting. In our room, we watched some not interesting movies in TV, and then Ditto went to sleep. While Ditto was sleeping, I marked exciting places in Genting Theme Park based on magazine review while sipping a nice hot coffee.

Sunday, July 17, 2005:
When I woke up, Ditto already wear a nice shirt and went downstair to have breakfast. Why so hurry?? I took a bath, then went downstair having a breakfast with a forrest hill view and cold wind blew at us. Wow it's so nice! I ate like a pig, Ditto watched me finished my meal in awe. After we checked out from Hotel, we took the Hotel shuttle bus to Genting Skyway. I took a camera recording the fun trip to Genting Theme Park using cable car. It's very refreshing to feel the cold morning wind that flew directly from forrest hills. It's like in the first part of "Sound of the Music" movie.

We played casino. I won 10 rm there! I followed the simple tips: stop when you win. Ditto also tried the casino machine and he has won 15 rm but he kept playing, and he lost all of his winning (I told you!!). When we entered the casino in the morning and later in the evening, Ditto was TWICE mistakenly identified as kid under 21, he must show his ID to the security to prove his age (hahaha...).

After we ate at McD, finally Ditto agreed to take Flying Dragon ride. He seemed very scared, he held the safety bar very firmly along the way. He said it's a very wild dragon haha... In fact, it's a very nice ride compared to the Sky Ride! I asked Ditto to try the Space Shot, a ride where we will be lifted up high to the sky, and then drop to the ground with enormous speed then lifted up again. He said no way. Tired to force Ditto to take the "exciting" rides with no success, I tried the Sky Venture ride alone. This is a ride where we are blown by 190 km/h wind from below so that we could really fly inside. It's very hard to keep your body stable. I almost blown to the top when I'm not carefully followed the trainer instructor to keep my sight parallel to the ground. When I looked down, suddenly my body went up and I almost panicked. It's very scary but excited as well! (Ditto you don't know what you miss heheheh...).

Then we ate at Kenny Rogers. In my two days with Ditto, we ate KFC in the first night, then McD this afternoon, then Kenny Rogers now haha. They're all junk food. I don't want to know my cholesterol level right now.

When we waited for our bus to arrive at 9 pm, a cold wind from rain outside blew makes me shivering, brrrr.... We arrived back to Hotel at 23 pm.

Monday, July 18, 2005:
I went breakfast at 10.15. Very late to enter the class, I decided to join the class after the first break. The mentor was from Beijing, a small lady with white nurse dress. Her English pronounciation was beyond comprehension. She used words like "so lis" (so this), "is le lim", "le job" (the job), "ifu" (if you). Being sick and unable to take more torture from her, Helmi went to hotel after lunch. Ditto and I went to Garuda office in Ampang street to get the sticker for our tickets. On the way back to Office, we went through KLCC, made a wrong turn there and accidently found "Helmi's park" (a couple days before, Helmi insisted that there's a pool and park near KLCC, we have searched the area but never found that place until now).

At night, we went to Law Yet to buy USB drive 1 GB for Imam, my friend. Helmi suddenly wanted to eat 'sop buntut' (hahaha where on earth could we find it here). We went to the 10th floor of Times Square mall near IMAX theater for dinner. Helmi chose a kind of chicken soup, both Ditto and I ate our favorite food: fried rice. I really wanted to take roller coaster ride in Times Square, but Ditto and Helmi didn't want to take it (da*n).

Tuesday, July 19, 2005:
The last day of the class. This morning, I went breakfast on 08.25. I met Helmi in the elevator. Ditto was already finished with his breakfast, but he had to wait for us (if he didn't want to leave by himself bwahahah). In class, the trainer immediately used the strange Chinese-like words that in some parts contained recognizable English words. Most of the trainees were busy with their own laptop checking e-mail, browsing, etc. The ones that seemed still interested and paying attention to her were Bryan, our GigaViz instructor, and the two chinese trainees (maybe they could understand her language, but I'm not sure).

Finally the class finished early at 15.30. Some trainees said goodbye to each other and went back to hotel. We went to China Town later that evening. Then we took LRT to KLCC (Petronas Twin Tower Mall). We ate KFC there (finally Helmi agreed to eat junk food with us hehe). Then we watched Fantastic Four movies. Ditto already watched this movie, but he went with us anyway. Then in the night at 22.30, we took a picture of KLCC at night (thanks god, it's not raining this night) with night shot and flash. Cool! We could finally capture the lights from KLCC twin tower at night.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005:
We checked out from the hotel at 10.30 am. In the airport, we exchanged the pictures from each other cameras during lunch. The plane departed at 13.30 and reached Jakarta at 15.40 (there's one hour time zone difference). Coincidently, my mom had just arrived from Banda Aceh, so I went back home with her. This trip was definitely one of the memorable experiences in my life.