#47 - Surprises indeed

09.05.2010

8th and 9th May 2010 : Pin coming to Penang.

We booked Sri Sayang apartment for one night stay and Ting managed to join us this round. Too bad Yong can’t make it. We exchanged many news in the car on our way around the Penang island and on our way to Batu Feringgi. Wow, one of us got proposed for 3 times already! And some of us still questioned her as to what is she waiting for. Of course it was meant as teasing only as we do respect her decision. Besides marriage is not a small matter, better think carefully before saying ‘Yes’.

We checked in into Sri Sayang and rested for a while. I borrowed Huei’s car to drive to Taman Pekaka for my grandmother’s Mother’s Day celebration while Huei was fetched by her friend to somewhere. So, only Ying, Pin, Lih and Ting left. They didn’t want to follow me to Taman Pekaka and decided to take bus to the night market area. After which, they walked back to the apartment. Felt a bit guilty but what to do?

Huei and I got back to the apartment not long after they reached the room. There, we pulled the mattress to the living room and chatted there. We used poker card to do some prediction. I never did that before but apparently, they are quite used to it. So I joined in. Nothing much special for mine. But there are elements of surprise for some of us. And indeed we got the first surprise that night itself! There was fireworks display and we can see it clearly from our apartment. A pleasant surprise indeed. It was so beautiful and quite long and the best part is, we don’t have to strain our neck to look upwards. A pleasant surprise indeed!

They enjoyed their wine while I enjoyed my Anglia Shandy. Don’t know why, I can never make myself to like wine. We talked about working life and love life. We exchanged opinions and the discussion lasted until 1.40am. The next morning, we had Maggi instant noodle, marble cake and Sprite for our breakfast. After lazing around and packing our stuff, Pin went to Feringgi beach alone. We were too lazy to walk down to the beach. No wonder ppl say we never appreciate things in front of us. Haha. Only Pin appreciated the beach as she stays in S’pore currently. After checking out, we started our journey to Georgetown area.

First stop, Penang cendol. Pin had been craving for it since Sat. Finally she ate it but she felt slightly disappointed. I also don’t think the cendol is nice. Then we went to Prangin Mall as Pin wanted to eat tomyam noodle in ‘Shua Shua Le’. That’s where we got our second surprise! While eating and chatting happily, we felt tremor for quite some time. At first, each of us thought we were only imagining it. When checking out with each other, then only we realised that it was a tremor. Some customers in the shop left without finishing their food and the shops closed down immediately (Except for the shop we were eating in). We were 50/50 whether to run or to finish our noodles.

After a torturing moment, we decided to quickly finish our food and dashed for our car. It was not a good feeling. Felt kan cheong and at the same time, we reminded ourselves not to take the lift. Our car was parked on the 7th floor. So imagine it, we took escalator up to the 5th floor and climbed stairs all the way up to the 7th floor. Not a wise decision right, we should run downwards instead. Anyway, if the building was to collapse, we wouldn’t have made it in time to escape anyway. Thank God nothing bad happened. We were actually worried as the building itself had many crack signs on the exterior. But when we managed to drove out of the building finally, everything seemed normal on the outside.

As if not tremor was felt at all. Later when I read The Star Online onlyI realised that only those in Prangin and a few high-rise building felt it. That time, we really felt kan cheong but I guess being in the company of friends made us braver and calmer especially since none of us panicked. Finally, we knew how those living in the earthquake prone area felt whenever this kind of thing happened. Not something which we want to experience. And we finally concluded that Ting is very lucky indeed. We even joked that she must be with us each time if we don’t want something bad to happen to us. Cos when she was with us in Sri Sayang apartment, we got pleasant surprise (fireworks)!

Brought Pin to buy some local delicacies at Penang Road market before sending her off to Penang airport. We accompanied her until 4.30pm and took many photos. We bode farewell to Pin and headed back to mainland. Reached home and after unpacking my stuff, I immediately turned on my laptop to play with my laptop. Still not very used to Windows 7 though. I tried uploading the photos in FB so that we don’t have to purposely meet to get the photos but to no avail. It kept on failing my uploading. What a waste of time! And I did something stupid again! I was deleting the content of my pen drive and without realising it, I deleted those in my hard disk instead. I only realised it when it was too late and nothing can be done even when I restored it to the previous state. Why?

Cos there was a prompt which says the photos are too big to fit into Recycle Bin and had to be deleted permanently. I clicked OK though I felt weird. But hmm, now I lost all the photos already. Haiz…

Never mind, life is short. Just look forward la. What happened had happened. No use thinking about it. Trmrw is Monday and Ong is back from Medan. Wonder how is she doing since there was indeed an earthquake in Indonesia measuring at 7.1 Richter scale. Hope she is alright!