The Personal Blog of Benny Ong – bennyong.com » 2007 » August
Aug 31
After fetching my mum from the airport, I decided to drop by Floria Putrajaya which is the first ever Flower and Garden festival set to be an annual event in the Federal Administrative Capital. My mum has never set foot in Putrajaya before which was even a better choice as well to show her the amazing buildings there.
The Outdoor Garden Arrangements
The Table Flower Arrangements
It was a free event with no charges for the parking as well. It faired out better than the Fireworks Competition. Here are some random pictures as a result of my sister Adeline was happily snapping away.
Click here to visit the web page for more information on the event.
That’s all for now and till next time. Buh bye!
Aug 26
I have finally got myself back into messing with scripts. I tested dozens today and thought it was about time I hosted a useful tool.
I spent a good half of Sunday on customizing this. I am planning to add a few functionality and features whereby interested users can brand the page.
This web based tool allows you to download streaming videos into your desktop. It currently works with 8 major sites including YouTube, Ifilm, Blip.tv, MySpace and Google Video. The captured videos are in .flv format and you would require a compatible player for it.
Please share your feedback with me on how you thought about the tool.
Although it is not 100% ready, it was too good for me to put it aside. Have fun playing with it!
Aug 25
With much buzz going around with the night sky of Putrajaya being lighted up with fireworks, how can I not be a part of the event. We were planning to catch the display from a far without getting tickets but thought it would be worth the money. This is because the fireworks coordinates with the beat of the accompanying music.
Picture Taken From The Viewing Deck of PICC
It was Team Italy’s turn. At 10.00 p.m. sharp after a countdown lead by the DJ, the display started with Nancy Sinatra’s song Bang Bang and I was soon hypnotize with the variations of fireworks. It lasted a little over twenty minutes. My favorite fireworks was a green circle with a red star in the middle. I was left impress with how the participants managed to calculate and mixed the chemicals correctly to get such a master piece. You can actually search on YouTube all the participants display captured by visitors. Try to search for the ones with accompanying music.
Just a random thought: Since it was near the airport, I am just wondering how it would be like to have a bird’s eye view of the event.
The organization of the whole event could have been better I would say. There were very limited selection of food available to those who decide not to join the buffet which was about roughly RM 100.00 more. The parking was overpriced at RM 10.00 per entry despite the visitors buying tickets to attend the 20 minutes display. There were also a very poorly executed fashion show before the fireworks. Well, my complains did not end there. The journey home took two hours and it put me off from coming back again for the other upcoming ones.
Hopefully the organizer’s will be able to capture the learnings from this event and improve it for any more upcoming events at Putrajaya. Click here to find out more about the organizers and future events.
Aug 23
A world premiere:
Being a self worshipper, I asked my ex-house mate to make a cartoon version of myself and looked how it turned out to be. Hey! I don’t look that fat in real life! Well, thanks for the hard work!
Share your thoughts on this, does it represent me at all or someone out there can come out with something better.
Aug 22
As a follow up to being in her concert and Gwen with the Harajuku girls still looking hot in leotard, a colleague of ours send us an extract from the media.
She deserves the credit for taking the initiative. She could have not even bother to perform. Kudos to Gwen and let’s see what the bunch has to say about Beyonce’s upcoming concert.
Aug 21
Well, I just got back from her concert at Putra Indoor Stadium with my colleagues. We were seated on the front row of the top tier. (Cheap tickets but not the cheapest! So we were cheapskates, but not as cheap as we can be!)
The Bunch Waiting To Enter
The only complaint that I have, well, there are several ones to be honest. First, the sign on the entrance that says no camera or water allowed. Well, can’t the organizer have that in their initial ads. We paid to get in and by all means, I firmly believe it is our right to snap pictures of the concert. What were their concerns, that we will make a profit from the snapshots? At least not allowing us to carry in drinks was a bit justifiable because it was a stunt to earn more money by the organizers as they are selling refreshments in side. (Debatable) I wonder if Gwen even knows about this.
Well, luckily we manage to sneak our cameras through the security check point thanks to the girls. I would have been making a big fuss if the camera was confiscated because there were practically millions of camera flashes in the indoor stadiums anyways. So, we were just being typical enthusiastic fans that wanted to capture the moment. It was a also really pointless to not allow people to bring in cameras but acceptable if they are camera mobile phones. Silly!
The show started about 45 minutes later where the Harajuku Girls started taking over the stage and. She opened the concert with Sweet Escape. (Sadly, Akon was not to be seen after the controversy. Click here to read more and see the video of Akon’s mistake)
She belted out hits such as Cool, Rich Girl and 4 In The Morning. The 1 and half hours concert ended with her first solo single What You Waiting For. She did not sing Crash which happens to be one of my fave tracks.
It was another exciting concert and I am thankful that she decided to perform in Malaysia despite all the restrictions in place. I am pretty sure money is not everything for her and she could have done something better than performing in leotard.
Aug 19
I woke up about a quarter to 10.00 to get myself ready to attend my sister’s convo. Well, it was a struggle thanks to the wise choice of going to watch the new Disney Cartoon movie, Ratatouille : Rat-a-too-ee at midnite. Anyways, I slept a majority of the time I was in the cinema (wasted investment).
Kudos to my sis for waking up a couple of hours later to attend her Convo. Well, I don’t think she would want to wait another year for it anyways.
Enough said, her Graduation was the main reason the Ongs decided to reunite in Penang for.
Adeline’s Graduation
It is seldom that we ever get a chance to take a family picture together and look how wide Adeline’s smile is (ear to ear). We hang out at the University grounds for about over an hour before we headed on for lunch.
To add her graduation picture on our wall, we headed on to the photo studio at about 4.00 p.m. to get professional pictures taken. We started the trip back to KL straight after. Congratulations to my loving sis!
Aug 18
Well, it was nice to be back in Penang after 6 looooong months. The thing I missed most will have to be the food and my not too loooooong ago discovered favourite Laksa Lemak in Balik Pulau. I am more incline to this than the Asam Laksa. Well, I like anything with curry in it anyways. (eg. Dry Curry Wan Tan Mee & Dry Curry Hor Fun).
Feasting on Laksa Lemak
It was my sister, Adeline who introduced me to this place and I have felt in love with it ever since. The short drive up hill that leads to Balik Pulau is scenic but can be of a risk during rainy weather. Roughly about 20 minutes from where I live is like a whole new place traditional town that my family enjoys. And with my dad around, there will always be an abundance of food. We started with the nutmeg juice and durian before attacking the Laksa stall.
Part of the agenda was to drop by Kek Lok Si, one of the many landmarks to visit in Penang. I was impress with the progress they have made on the construction of the Goddess of Mercy statue and shrine. I can recall all my childhood memories being there and am very pleased to see the amount of development it has gone through. Since places of worships have become so commercial, I am glad to see progress and evidence that the donations and fundings was channeled to the expansion of the temple. See my contribution that will be immortalized in the new temple building until it breaks. MYR 30.00 to get your name written on a roof tile. (for marketing purposes, I even cheekily wrote the url of my blog on it) There was a complimentary poster of a bird’s view of the temple lighten up with lanterns during the night.
Kek Lok Si Donation
Before we left, we even managed to take an album worthy family picture. Notice the height order.
The Picture Of The Temple Next to Goddess of Mercy Shrine
How can I not snap a picture of my chinese astrology sign.
Year of The Rat
As a summary, it was a short yet refreshing trip home. (look at my hair for evidence, non spiked up hair = relax mode)
Aug 10
Friday has arrived and we celebrated Song Yia’s birthday and Sih Wei’s one in the office with cup cakes from the lately much publicized Cuppacakes. The cake only looked good but did not particularly tasted good even for my sweet tooth. Something that looks that good don’t have to taste nice anyways. The business is operated from a corner lot unit in SS21/SS22 and by the looks of it, they are making an impressive earning. Kudos to Malaysian entrepreneurs!
CuppaCakes with part of her name
We gathered at the pantry to sing the standard birthday song and everyone started digging into the cakes after. The day did not end there for me as I was involve in a master plan to surprise Song Yia during her lunch with her team at Lot 10. The look on her face was classic when I showed up with a bouquet of flowers.
Later that evening, we made our way to Yuen Steamboat (I was there a year ago!) at Sunway for dinner. It is another classic tale of chicken wing snatching and I actually saw a piece flying courtesy of Jin Siang. We went into to battle as a strong team of 5 but came back barely alive after the war. To be honest, I was not even prepared for what was to come and I was indeed never going to resort to pushing another person for some chicken wings. (Unless, it is the last piece on earth maybe) Well, it is amazing to see how people’s behavior is influenced by pieces of marinated chicken wings. I saw a few people (I suspect they are fellow bloggers) actually capturing the event on video which I am pretty sure are available somewhere in cyberspace by now.
Contradicting what I just did say, I was very tempted to brave through the people every time I see a fresh batch of wings being brought to the buffet spread. This was even when I was already full. Oh dear! What have I become? The buffet place has turned me into the same people I despise most. However, I still manage to control myself and joined the ice cream queue instead which was trust me, more civilized.
Being the old bunch we were, we headed home after dinner and called it a night.
Benny Ong
Aug 07
I am almost in tears while publishing this post. Well, my streamyx is finally up and running. My computer is finally reunited with an internet connection after more than a year.
I have to be honest to tell you that we have a long way to go in customer service. Can you believe it that it took more than a month for my internet and phone line to be up and running. Oh well, enough moaning already. I will spend the next few days figuring how to enable wireless connections at home.
It’s a bit late now.. Till my next post. C ya.