My church is organizing a congress / church camp in Bukit Gambang Resort City (BGRC) next month. I’ve been asked to do a treasure hunt en route there, something for the families to occupy their time with along the 3-hour journey. So last weekend I took a recce trip there on Saturday morning and stayed a night there. To be frank, I’ve never actually heard of BGRC before this. All I knew was that Gambang together with the equally weird sounding Gehbeng were two industrial towns near Kuantan. Back in the day when my parents stayed in Kuantan in the mid-60’s, Gambang used to be a one street town with…

Watching Andy Murray win the Wimbledon last weekend, I got more than a few glimpses of the great Ivan Lendl, his coach, in the stands. Lendl looks pretty much the same as I remember him from the 80’s, maybe a few pounds heavier. It was probably my dad who got me started on tennis. My brother watched a little too, he didn’t like Lendl. In retrospect, its easy to see why, with his sawdusting and boring groundstrokes. My brother much preferred the young upstart Boris Becker. Those days, there were lots of tennis greats, Mats Wilander, Jimmy Connors (“can’t top-spin a ball to save his life” according to my brother),…

Last Sunday marked 20 years since Wong Ka Kui died in a freak stage accident in Japan. In terms of being a fan, I was very late in catching on. But at least it was when he was still alive. I was introduced to him by my university friends during our many karaoke trips after exams. They loved his songs, and borrowing some of their cassettes, I was soon introduced to this foursome band from Cantopop land in Hong Kong. Cantopop in those days was filled with singers belting out schmaltzy ballads, most of them undistinguishable from the next. Don’t get me wrong. There are some gifted singers. But if…

My family hardly eats any rice, we only buy brown rice for the kids. But i know how the drill is about buying rice, whether brown or white. We go to Tesco, or whichever hypermarket having a sale, but most of the time it was Tesco. We’d go to the rice aisle, pick the brand on sale from the choice of the few we usually buy from. If it was white rice, it was most of the time Dragon Pearl. Nowadays with brown rice, it is usually ecoBrown. Since our rate of consumption is slow, we go for the 5kg. Back in those days my kids were small and we…

Whenever i finish reading a book, or after watching a movie, or a particular good season of a TV show, i am compelled to go online to read the reviews. Some people like to read reviews before, i like to see what other people, including experts thought, and whether or not they agree with me. For movies, there are only two review sites i read – Empire Online, and Roger Ebert. There used to be a few more, especially those that used to listed in Yahoo! Movies. For some strange reason, they’ve done away with this critics’ reviews and replaced it with user reviews. I like Empire’s reviews, but of…

When i was small toddler starting to learn my alphabet, i noticed the new cars in town had licence plates that started with JAA. Older cars like my mom’s Fiat 146 had only two letters, JH. Even older cars had only the letter J followed by the numbers, but these were rare even in my time. In my small town we could see new cars with newly minted plates quite often, as back in those days, Muar was one of only 2 towns in the state with an RIMV (JPJ) office. The other was the state capital JB far far away. I distinctively remember asking my parents about these car…

These past few years I don’t really watch many shows due to lack of time. Gone are the days when i can follow up to ten weekly shows plus anime series. These days i can only do a handful, and only if they are highly recommended. One of the holdovers from those earlier days is the comedy 30 Rock. I just watched the series finale, bringing and end to seven seasons. Lets face it, 30 Rock is not popular. No one else i know watches it, let alone appreciates it. One friend even asked me after watching a few episodes in season 1, “Funny meh?” Yes, i found 30 Rock…

When I was really small, I remember my mom used an insect spray that looked like this. You pumped the handle like a Nerf gun, and the spray came out. But then they introduced the tall thin canister spray we are familiar with now. The only difference was the earlier types had this white plastic button on top with the nozzle, and each time you used it, the oily spray would get onto your fingers and hands. If you didn’t wash your hands after, you’d be ingested all the yummy nutritious poison. See how close the nozzle is to your finger? It was only recently they introduced the type with…

I started this annual thing a few years back (see 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008 here) and its only fitting to do one for the just concluded year. In summary, 2012 has been a transitional year for me, and also a year of great financial implications. I changed jobs twice (you can imagine how i have to explain to friends why) and bought two properties while disposing of another. So you can have a picture of all the dealings with bankers and lawyers. But don’t get me wrong. It has been a blessed and fulfilling year. I had ample time to enjoy the things i love – church, time with…

This the last entry in my traveloguem to start from the beginning, read here. Ok, let me finish off this travelogue before the year ends, it has been more than a month since the trip. Day 7 marks the end of a week in Northern Thailand. Today, we drove off to Mae Taeng Elephant camp. This is more than an hour’s drive outside the city. The last trip here in 2005 we went to Maesa Elephant Park, which is much much nearer compared to Mae Taeng, but Calvin our guide says that Mae Taeng being surrounded by the jungle, is a better elephant camp. Besides, he says that the new…