Of Australia, Starbucks, Kim Gary and UPM

Due to the stupid wifi connection in USM, I'll cramp all the two days events inside one post.

1 Jan 2009
1400
Arrived at Queensbay (AGAIN!) with Pui Yee to watch Australia. The movie was good, but not great. I still prefer Moulin Rouge! any day. I find the warnings before the movie started (PG 13, 18 SG, 18 SX, etc) were rather useless as the censorship board still cut those scenes they deemed inappropriate (for us, those scenes were normal) such as kissing, foul languages and so on. If you branded a movie with 18 SX, the less you can do is leave the kissings alone!


1545?
Went to have Starbucks at Border. The buy 1 free 1 promotion really worth it. She had Dark Cherry Mocha Frappucino Blended Coffee while I had Toffee Nut Frappucino Blended Coffee. Delicious!

My cup of Starbucks!

1900
Went to Kim Gary for dinner. Since I didn't eat it on New Year Eve, I'm gonna eat it on New Year itself. Still need to queue up just to have dinner there. Ordered myself sliced pork in Szechuan style baked rice with cheese set. Yummy. Worth the wait. I even sign up for Kim Gary membership card. Now, I'm gonna go there pretty often.

What I'm having...
What's she having...
My membership card

2100
Reached USM. In about 3 hours time, I'm gonna embark on a trip to UPM to visit one of their research centre.

2 Jan 2009
0030
The journey began. It took 8 HOURS + to reach UPM, what with all those constant stoppings at the perhentians and each stop lasted for almost an hour! Can't really sleep at first, with the noisy bus ride, light,etc. In between consciousness and semi-consciousness during the first quarter of ride.

0845?
Reached UPM. Was being led to seminar room to, surprise surprise, listen to talks. I thought that the term "visit one of their research centre" means exploring around the facaulty, but apparently, for them, it means trapping us inside a room and bored us with talks by those facaulty director and laboratories heads about, another surprise here, pursuing master at UPM! Come on, my first year haven't finish yet and you start selling UPM to us? The professors were getting boring by the minutes, and the last one even worse. He talked in Malays EVEN he knew there were international students, telling us how 'cantik' (he used the word A LOT!!!) is mathemathics, and he ended his talk by telling us what we're learning now is useless. From his speech, I can CLEARLY see that he LOVED maths, almost the same as he loved his wife (if he's married), or maybe more! The only redeeming factor was that they had provided us free breakfast and lunch. After that, we hang around taking pictures.

One of the MANY talks until...
...people sleeping...
...and SMS-ing...
The place where we had our 'sleeps'
Was forced to 'shorten' myself...
Me and fellow coursemates...
Me and Xin Hao in the bus

1400?
Reached Alamanda shopping centre. It has a very beautiful architecture, but nevertheless, it doesn't save it from being a rather boring shopping complex. It just have 2 floors and a basement where the amusement park, bowling alley and cinema are located. For a KL standard, it's pathetic. How can it compete with all those monstrous shopping centres such as Mid Valley (and its sister, The Garden), 1 Utama, Time Square, etc? We ended up playing bowling to pass the time.

Exterior...

Interior

1630
Began heading back home. Nothing much to do but sleep, sleep and sleep.

2245
Touchdown! Reached USM! Overall, the trip was TIME WASTING but MONEY-WORTHY!

2315
In Khaleel blogging. As my battery about to run up and I'm still half done, I'll complete it tomorrow.

3 Jan 2009
14++
Still haven't finish it. Stupid USM wifi...the time to load pictures seem eternity...

2300
After having dinner with friends and doing some shopping, I'm back in Khaleel to finish the post. Job done!

p/s- KK, thanks for the donuts. And Xin Hao, your treat.