Bizarre Incident

I bought 8 vouchers from one of the Penang hotels located at Batu Ferringi in the recent Matta Fair. My wife’s uncle said he cannot drive long distance and requested I drive his Naza Citra to Penang. Though the Korean engine was a tad rough but the overall ride was good. I suspect the manufacturer origin of this car, KIA sought European engineers to tune its suspension. I had the same feel when I test drove the new 1.4L KIA Rio, a highly under-rated car. The Koreans are coming!

After spending more than a hundred ringgit eating the overpriced char kway teow, chee cheong fun, asam laksa, hokkien mee (prawn mee), oysters and mee jawa at Lorong Selamat, we finally checked into the hotel.

On the 2nd night, sister-in-law (S-I-L) wanted to check out the pasar malam activities towards the end of Tg. Bungah road. I left all of them to wander the pasar malam while I went to an open building area that sold thousands of DVDs. Called Mee Peng on the handphone to inform her of the availability of Korean movie series.

Later she came with her 18-year-old cousin. Not long I received a rather frantic call from my S-I-L asking me where was my wife. I calmly replied she is with me. Not suspecting anything amiss, I continued with my browsing. Within minutes, all of them came to the big DVD shop including my S-I-L’s husband. The moment I saw him, I showed him the 4-in-1 “Faces of Death” dvd (the cover pictured skulls) and asked if he had seen this documentary before.

After we had made our purchase and about to leave, my wife turned to me and asked a strange question “Do you know what happened?”. I replied “Hugh???”.

The story unfolds:

Apparently, earlier S-I-L’s husband received a call from a man’s voice purportedly called from my wife’s handphone claiming that both she and the cousin were accosted and held in captivity!(?). S-I-L’s husband sounded the alarm to the uncle whose daughter was with my wife, and the rest of the family members. They were in deep shock and ran to the dvd shop after hearing I was there.
Fortunately, when they found nothing of that sort happened everybody was puzzled whose voice did he hear on the handphone?

I withheld information…

Prior to this Penang trip, I spoke to one my most trusted friends about the hotel vouchers. My friend wanted to tell me something about the hotel but his wife stopped him from continuing since I have already finalized the hotel bookings. I suspected it had to do with something supernatural. My friend reassured me and said, “You just go and have a good trip”. I did not want to relay this to my wife then.

Once I was back in KL, I called my friend again to ascertain what was the mystery that he was withholding from me. He told me the Hotel that we stayed was once an area occupied by the Japanese Army to conduct executions. It was rumored the “Swimming Pool” is haunted.

My S-I-L’s husband was the only adult amongst the 9 of us who went into the Swimming Pool the evening before the incident.

Chilling revelation or pure coincident?

Blessing in disguise

My cancelled 2-week mandatory leave brought me luck. A vendor sponsored an RM3K+ ITIL Fundamentals professional certification 3-day course of which I would not have been able to attend had I gone to Bangkok. I took the exam and passed. I last took an official paper qualification test 19 years ago!

Airasia has graciously credited back the unused flight tickets to a special account that must be utilized within 3 months. This goes to show what an excellent company Airasia is. My salutations go to Tony Fernandes and his impeccable team. “Mana Ada Sistem” ought to learn from this customer’s Wow experience.

Had I known the unpredictable corporate audit visit was in the proximity of my holiday timetable I would have rescheduled it. With the inevitable cancellation, I had more time to organize and prepare for the all-important event. It was pure relief when the auditors did not have a single finding on my unit. Failing an ARR audit is a death sentence, literally means you are inept and to be sent to the firing squad.

My father-in-law suffered severe travel sickness when we went up to Fraser’s Hill yesterday. In my opinion, the 31 kms of endless zigzags stretching from Teras/Tranum to Kuala Kubu Baru, is the most winding road in West Malaysia. Things could be worse had he been in the plane.

Potential Runner?












My in-laws cursed the Hill. I lead them to the Jeriau Waterfalls and to our disappointment the water was muddy due to contamination. My brave 6-year old niece, Jing Lin surprised me with her athleticism when she climbed the steep stairs after stairs all by herself and was the first to reach the end of the waterfall unaided ahead of everybody else! Perhaps I can train her to be a runner someday :)

Incidentally, my last visit here was 1979 where my deceased dad drove his 1200cc green Toyota Corolla bringing along his mother-in-law, my maternal grandma. I still remember granny grumbled, “This place is a jungle”.

Fraser’s Hill is not a good place to bring your in-laws!

Coup De Tat

At 12:15 a.m. the phone rang. We thought we have overslept. The alarm was set to ring at 4:30 a.m., a time we have got used to waking up for races, only this time we were going to Klang to pick up my parents-in-law for our trip to Bangkok.

It was Mee Peng’s uncle who reported there was a major event happening in Bangkok. Disbelieving I log into the Internet. CNN and BBC reported at 10:30 p.m. the Thai army had moved 14 tanks to surround the Government office. Thaksin had declared a state of emergency. I tried going to the Thai newspapers: The Bangkok Post and The Nation but both were inaccessible. Apparently, their local CNN, BBC and Internet access were blocked.

I went back to sleep. At 4:30 a.m. the alarm clock rang. I log into the Internet again looking for updates. A coup had taken place and martial law was declared. At that point, the situation was unclear if Thaksin’s administration was staging any military counter-coup. There was an element of unknown.

After evaluating the risk, I decided to cancel the trip. I went back to sleep again but was interrupted by calls and SMSes from relatives and friends who were concerned about our whereabouts and safety. I also cancelled my 2-week leave and went back to work the next day.