Hong Kong is soooooo nice, soooooo many things to see, soooooo many things to play and soooooo many things to buy. It was practically the best trip of the decade!

Cityscape of Hong Kong Central over the sunset.

Okay don’t expect too much, this is just a teaser post. I have yet to finish editing tons of pictures and videos. You think what? I’m Superman ah?

Anyway, Hong Kong is really a nice city. We’ve heard and seen so much of Hong Kong from their dramas and movies, but I have to say that seeing it for yourself is totally a different experience.

Four of us — Sophea, Kah Wai, Cheng Lam and I — had so much fun exploring the city in 6 days.

Our 6-day Hong Kong trip can be summarised as below.

• Day 1 — Tsuen Wan
• Day 2 — Kowloon
• Day 3 — Central
• Day 4 — Tsim Sha Tsui
• Day 5 — Disneyland
• Day 6 — Shopping
• Hong Kong video

I will make each day into a single post plus a video and I will post them as soon as I’m done with editing.

Jenn Ting, Ted, Sophea and Cheng Lam (the first-timer).

This time, I didn’t manage to catch any sleep the night before the race. Maybe it’s because the 1/2 litre of iced jasmine tea I drank for dinner.

I was rolling on the bed, consciously and wide awake. By the time I took up my phone to check the time, it was already 3AM.

Ok I’m going to skip all the crap. Everything is more or less the same as my previous run in 2009 — Wake up early, go to Dataran Merdeka, warm-up, line-up, count down, bang! and run.

At the starting line ready to run.

Then we keep running and keep running.

Sunlight peaking through the clouds.

3km… 2km… 1km… finally reached the finishing line!

Ted, Sophea, Cheng Lam and Jenn Ting with their Finisher Medals.

And we got our medals. Happy.

Me and my 10KM Finisher Medal.

I finished the race at 1 hour 21 minutes and 43 seconds. Slightly slower than my last year’s result.

This year’s medal is nicer than last year’s. More solid and heavier. The entire event was more organised than the first time.

I’m kind of lazy to write already. I’ll be back again next year Standard Charted KL Marathon 2011.

Well, I can now proudly say that the dark age is finally over and daylight has come back to shine on this land once again. Once a shadowed era will soon be gone and there will rise a new empire that will change the history of mankind once and for all.

Kidding. Inspired by Prince of Persia. It was really a good movie.

But things are certainly changing. I’ve actually completed most of the things I complained. Here’s the list of completed things.

• I’ve thrown away all the expired food in my drawer.
• I’ve cleaned my room
• I’ve cleaned the bathroom
• I’ve imported all the pictures and posted most of them
• I’ve backed-up my computer
• I’ve signed-up for the gym (for 30 days) and started my marathon training

I have even started to work on a personal project (no, not freelance, it’s something for myself) which I’m very excited about. I will announce what is it in time when things become more concrete.

Okay you might start asking, “how bout the sink?”

Yes the sink is finally unclogged with the help from my house owner. And also a big thank you to Kevin who actually cleaned the sink so thoroughly now it looks like a brand new mirror.

However, unclogging the sink wasn’t the first thing done. In fact, it was the last thing done.

Well, I guess many of you were right. A clogged sink has nothing to do with how I live my life.

I’m sorry sink I’ve put all the blame on you, it was all my fault. Don’t hate me please, I will use you more often now.

So if it’s not about unclogging the sink, what have I done to unclog my life?

Breaking the comfort zone.

It all started one day when I told myself enough is enough. I forced myself to get out of the room and headed to a nearby community park to have a jog, even though I knew I have less than 20 mins to jog before the sun sets.

It was my first time being at the park. By the time I reached there, it was already 7PM. Trying to catch every single sunlight still available, I ran non-stop for the next 20 mins.

During that short run, I’ve actually seen different people, different sceneries and I almost felt like I was breathing different air. I felt good.

Since then, things started to change and I’ve slowly crossed out items on my list one by one. And not forgetting to mention that exercise and proper rest increase energy level.

Isn’t it our life is the same? We slowly build our comfort zone by doing the same thing over and over again. Sooner or later, we will be bored of what we are doing and eventually life will stop flowing.

When that happens, take some time off and try to do something outside of the comfort zone.

You might see things differently and who knows that would be just the needed force to push through the clogged pipe.

P/S: One more thing, if you ever encounter clogged pipe in the future, and if you tried using drain cleaning solution, plunger or hot water and still not working, try getting a spiral pipe cleaning rod and stick it all the way down and most probably, your problem will be gone.

The event was all about running the DBS, BPS and IIS, within the CPIDS and ESPMDT using the latest MBPOMS and SCIMDPIMOTEIS.

Ok lah I was joking, I don’t speak IT.

What I’m trying to say is, I have no idea what Microsoft was launching that day. The presentation was brief and not straight to the point. All we were told is that the futuristic future is very near with Microsoft’s cloud computing.

As you can see from the typical PowerPoint slide above, no significant ground-breaking products. The talk was boring, the crowd was quiet, and the entire event was done in less than an hour.

If you ask me why Apple can always make big impact when launching new products, I guess the reason is obvious.

Or maybe Microsoft Malaysia was just trying to give Steve Balmer something to do while he was here in Malaysia.

And we are led to those who help us most to grow, if we let them, and we help them in return.

Well I dont know if I believe that’s true, but I know I’m who I am today, because I knew you.

Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better? But because I knew you, I have been changed for good.

So much of me is made from what I learned from you. You’ll be with me like a hand print on my heart.

Now whatever way our stories end, I know you have rewritten mine, by being my friend.

Happy belated birthday to you once again my best friend.

I hope you get all you ever wanted in life and be the happiest person in this whole wide world.

Dedicating this song “For Good” from the Broadway Musical “Wicked” to all the best friends out there.

P/S: The beautiful lyrics were taken from the song. More pictures on my Facebook album.

Messed up, is what I would use to describe my current state of life.

Many things around me seem broken and stale. Not only physically but also psychologically.

To explain this, I’ll have to start from the beginning.

First, the sink in the kitchen was clogged, which makes it impossible to clean the kitchen area, which in turn, makes me lazy to clean the washroom as well, and eventually leads to lack of motivation to clean my room, of which has not been cleaned for more than two months now.

Then, There were some performance and stability issues with my iMac at home, which in turn, makes me reluctant to clean up the mess of my photos, movies and music albums, which leads to lack of motivation to backup my iMac to the external hard drive, of which was given to me as my birthday present two months ago.

Not only that, there are more messed up things like a list of unfinished jobs at work, tons of expired food in my drawer, piles of messy unfolded clothes in my room, loads of un-imported pictures in my camera, list of unexecuted exercise routines and list of unfinished blog posts still in draft.

One thing leads to another. By the time when I want to tidy up the whole mess, I just don’t know how to start.

At the end, ignorance is bliss. I’ll spend my whole day watching my favourite drama in my comfy bed or I’ll just sleep my day through.

I seriously don’t know why is this happening or how this started.

But this is bad. Like seriously bad bad. Imagine Beyonce talking to Lady Gaga, “you’ve been a very bad girl, a very, very, bad bad girl Gaga.” Ok out of topic.

Something needs to be done to clear up the mess. You might think I’m stupid but somehow I believe that the key to clear up all this mess lies in the clogged sink in the kitchen.

Maybe unclogging the sink symbolises unclogging my life. Should the sink is unclogged once and for all, life will flow again.

Well, I do, all the time. I have lots of dreams ever since I was young. I guess being an imaginative Pisces helps a lot too.

Today while I was surfing Flickr, and sort of got bored, I thought why not search for pictures of places I dreamed of going?

The more I search, the more I feel excited. So I compiled a list, a dream list of beautiful places that would be so cool if I could go to and see it for myself.

All pictures taken from Flickr under Creative Commons license, click on the image to go to the Flickr page.

Mountain

The closest dream destination. this is kind of easy to achieve. But I always give myself too many excuses.

Mount Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.

Snow Mountain

Well, not exactly that I want to go to Italy. But all I wish is to go to some snow mountains, feel the coldness and ski.

Piani Di Bobbio Valtorta, Italy.

Volcano

Seeing an active volcano is kind of cool isn’t it? The closest volcano? Where else other than our neighbour Indonesia.

Mount Bromo, East Java, Indonesia.

Island

Who doesn’t like white sandy beaches, crystal clear water and lively reefs. And you can find the best of all these at Maldives (I heart it’s sinking soon right?).

Angaga Island Resort & Spa, Maldives.

Desert

Desert is kind of on top of the dream list actually. But Saudi Arabia sounds kind of far-fetched though. Maybe China?

Al-Dhana Desert, North of Najd, Saudi Arabia.

Salt Flat

Salar de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat located at Southwest Bolivia, South America. It’s a dried lake covered with salt. When there’s water, it becomes the largest mirror on Earth.

Can you even imagine walking on it?

Salar de Uyuni, Southwest Bolivia, South America.

Glacier

When you say “the tip of the iceberg”, do you actually have any idea how big the iceberg is? I have totally no idea how big these things are. That’s why have to go and see one.

Svalbard Glaciers, Northeast Greenland, Arctic.

Aurora Borealis

To me, aurora is like the most beautiful thing on earth. It makes me feel calm and relax. So this should be the ultimate dream.

Aurora Borealis at Bear Lake, Alaska, United States.

Well, dream is only dream. I know it’s like near impossible to go to all these places. But no harm having a dream right?

Do you have a dream? What is your dream?

My grandparents’ grave.

It is always the biggest family gathering after Chinese New Year.

Uncles, cousins and sister.

Joss papers and flowers as offerings.

As tradition, guys will do the incense offering first follow by girls.

As tradition, burning joss papers and paper offerings never change for so many years.

Burning all joss papers and paper offerings.

But wait, if you can’t change the tradition, then change the things to burn. Let’s burn some LV bags.

Paper LV bags.

Oh wait, it reads WF not LV. Damn, paper offerings also got pirated version!

P/S: More pictures on my Facebook album.

She smiled and said, “thank you, Mr. Dennis.”

“Thank you.” I smiled.

“Is that your real name?” she asked.

“Er, not really, not on my IC. Why?”

“No lah, I’m just wondering. You must be very good at playing tennis right? Or else you won’t have that name.”

“What?! No! Wait, is that what shows up in the system? Tennis Lee?”

“Yeah.”

“No! It should be Dennis not Tennis! It’s D not T!”

“Oh, I see. Well, I guess there’s been a mistake. No worries, we can change that next time you come.”

Whatever

I was driving on the North South Expressway together with my mom and 3 other younger brothers and sister.

We had to reach Bidor by 7 AM to meet up with other family members to visit our ancestors’ graves.

It was dark. The only light source on the road was the light from my car’s headlamps.

Suddenly, I saw a shadow in the middle of the road. It was a man standing not far away waving his both hands at me.

I slow down and stop my car by the roadside. I rolled down the passenger seat’s window and the man came nearer.

“Bang, boleh tolongkah bang…” he was an Indian guy asking for help. He pointed somewhere not far away and there was his motorcycle, still standing, and another guy lying on the floor.

I drove nearer and it looks like the accident just happened not long ago. The guy lying on the floor had his entire right arm’s muscle split off and there was blood everywhere.

“Sudah panggil ambulance?” I asked.

“Baru accident sajalah bang,” he replied.

So I took out my phone and called Plusline to ask for help (it’s 1800–88-0000, just in case you didn’t know).

“Selamat pagi encik. Apa saya boleh bantu?” A guy answered the phone.

“Selamat pagi, sini ada satu accident dekat km 225 ke arah selatan. Boleh hantar bantuan dan ambulance?”

The guy made some arrangements over the phone and hung up.

“I sudah panggil bantuan, you tungu sekejap ya,” I told that Indian guy.

“Tolonglah bang, sila tolonglah, kita semua orang Malaysia kan?”

His hands (with blood) already half entered the car through the window.

“Ya ya I sudah panggil ambulance, you tunggu sekejap.”

“Tolonglah, dia tu sangat sakit tau, you mesti kena tolonglah, 1Malaysia kan?”

Wow! 1Malaysia some more! I really didn’t know what he was expecting me to do.

“I tak boleh buat apa-apa lagi. I sudah panggil ambulance, nanti ambulance akan datang.”

I turned around and asked my mom, “should we go down to take a look?” My mom said we should leave because there’s nothing more we could do plus we were rushing time.

So I told the guy to hang in there and slowly drove off while seeing him getting further and further away and finally disappeared in the rear mirror.

Okay, I pity him really. He might be in great trauma. But you should know why none of us went down to help. Firstly, it could be a trap. They get us down the car before they rob us or something. Secondly, I really didn’t know what else to do other than calling for ambulance.

But one thing I must tell you that the blood and wound don’t look fake. If they were fake, they could simply beat those professional makeup artists in Hollywood.

If you were in this situation, what would you do? Go down to help (for the name of 1Malaysia) or stay in the car, or maybe just drive away don’t stop at all?