MERDEKA! Woo hoo!

Posted by Alan Heng

This day marks the time of the year where all proud Malaysians shout "MERDEKA! MERDEKA! MERDEKA!" in unison & rejoice in our 52nd year of Independence from former British colonial rule back in 1957.

This year's event however has been toned down a notch in the Government's effort to observe the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Malaysia is officially a Muslim country, but "Islam is not Malaysia's official religion" as mentioned on MalaysiaKini. I still don't get it...

Anyway in the spirit of celebration, I would like to take this opportunity to wish ALL fellow Malaysians a HAPPY & BLESSED MERDEKA! Drive safe folks!

1Borneo blackout for the ___th time. (lost count)

Posted by Alan Heng

This was the scene in front of Parkson (ground floor) around 7:30pm just right after the mall experienced a power failure. On their 1st day of business, Parkson was well prepared for any eventualities & had their own power generator ready.

After getting no answer from the Concierge counter I rang up Sabah Electricity to inquire on the situation. According to one of its personnel, a power sub-station near UMS area had apparently blown a fuse resulting in a massive blackout.

Power eventually came back about 90 mins later much to the relief of shoppers around & also to a group of staff who were secretly hoping the power stayed dead so they could knock off work early...

Well tough luck fellas. Now GET BACK TO WORK!

All Saints Class of 1990 reunion plans UPDATE

Posted by Alan Heng


I must give credit to Jaswinder for preparing the concise report below regarding last night's Reunion plans meetup. Thanks again Jas! ;)

Dear Friends,

A group of us have fixed the reunion dinner for:

Date : 19th February, 2010 (Friday)
Venue : Palace Hotel, KK (to be confirmed)

Details of first meeting are as follows:

1ST MEETING FOR ALL SAINTS FORM 5 CLASS OF 1990 REUNION DINNER

Date : 15th Aug 2009, Saturday.
Time : 9pm.
Location : Lotus coffeeshop, Damai.

Present were:

Alan Heng
Yip Jang Jye
Jaswinder Kaur
Robin Chin
Magdeline Wong
Ian Ma
Roland Yong

Details of the meeting are as below:
  • The first meeting for the Form 5 Class of 1990 reunion dinner was initiated by Alan Heng, and a group of seven classmates met up to talk about where and when to hold the event. A suggestion was brought up to hold it next year, as 2010 marks 20 years since we finished our Form 5.
  • We decided that the reunion should be held in the week Chinese New Year is celebrated, as many of our classmates who have moved away may be returning home then. We chose 19th February, 2010 (Friday), and tentatively, it will be at the Palace Hotel in Kota Kinabalu (Robin to confirm venue).
  • The “committee” decided that it should only be open to classmates and their spouse/partner (if they choose to bring their spouse/partner). It was indicated at the meeting that having children around may not be a great idea. For now, each person who attends will be asked to pay RM50, which will be used to pay for a buffet style dinner, and for souvenirs, decorations, etc.
  • We are also looking at the possibility of getting ex-classmates/corporate sponsors to give lucky draw prizes.
  • The idea of inviting our teachers was thrown to the table, but will be discussed further at the next meeting.
  • We will also do a tribute for classmates who have passed away.
  • The committee will try and collect old photos, and new ones, for a slide presentation.
  • We will need to place an advertisement to reach out to our friends, once we have finalised the venue.
  • The committee also needs a list of friends, and we are hoping that everyone will reach out to ex-classmates who are currently not on Facebook.

Please feel free to email Alan (alan.heng@hotmail.com) and Jaswinder (jaswinder.kler@yahoo.com) if any of us have contacted our other ex-classmates. Thanks!


Friends, let's make this happen!

My NEW blog interface. What do you think?

Posted by Alan Heng

Just finished "recalibrating" my entire blog interface with a new template. I must admit, the more I dabble in this trade, the more I'm loving it! Free blog templates are readily available EVERYWHERE on the internet by the way & with some research, any rookie could pull this stunt off.

A good starting place I would recommend is Blogger Templates. Online directions are there to guide you along from downloading your favourite template to uploading it to your blog. The step-by-step instructions might be a little bit overwhelming at first, but you will eventually get the hang of it.

Happy blogging y'all... :)

PARKSON 1Borneo opening NEXT MONDAY

Posted by Alan Heng

That's right folks! Parkson is finally opening its doors to the public next Monday 17th August 2009! (from a reliable insider source) And it's about damn time!

After about 2 weeks delay, they are now ready to extend their arms & greet us all to bask in their splendour of their newly renovated Sabah flagship store here in 1Borneo.

So everyone after work drop by 1Borneo's new anchor tenant & who knows, you'll end up with great bargains yet again!

Update 16th Aug:
Looks like they are putting tons of promo items on the Ground & 1st floor, just outside of their main entrances. Bargains galore! Huhuhu...!!! :P

Borneo Auto Challenge Car Show @ 1Borneo (15-16/8/09)

Posted by Alan Heng


The above title says it all & after attending last year's event, I was expecting something bigger & better. I even brought along my trusty digicam in hopes to capture that exciting, vibrant, energizing event which is filled with cool moded rides that are rarely seen on KK roads. And boy was I WRONG. Well, the word "wrong" doesn't exactly describe what I felt... more of DISAPPOINTING!.

A mixture of cheap cars with over-the-top customization along with the expensive, exotic supercars is acceptable. If they had only the latter, that would have been just great. But 99% of Malaysian-made cars on display? Where's the thrill in that?! After uploading the event logo pic I have decided not to further waste our precious time in viewing more pics that aren't even worthy of posting.

Come to think of it, why did I even post this here in the first place? Just another place to air my grievances I guess...

HTC SNAP

Posted by Alan Heng


Finally, after waiting for 4 months I got myself the HTC Snap. I have been eyeing this particular baby when it was first announced at the 2009 International CTIA Wireless convention in Las Vegas. No, I wasn't there (I wish!) but I got to know about it as this phone was featured front page on GSM Arena back in April this year.

The first half of 2009 has been a roller coaster ride for me as I was going through a number of mobile phones. My first qwerty keyboard mobile was the Motorola Q9h. It was a well built, killer messaging device with a great form factor running on the Windows Mobile platform. I could type out a text message in seconds and it was just a real productive device. But it lacked the most crucial part in today's mobile phone standards - WiFi. So, I began hunting for another device with a qwerty keyboard & Wifi & I ended up with the HP iPAQ 912 Business Messenger.

The iPAQ too was a good productive device with touch screen, superb battery life & it also had a built-in GPS receiver. What really bogged me down about the phone was the inaudible ringtone. The loudest tones was so pathetically low that I ended up missing calls almost all the time the phone was in my trouser pocket. And having it vibrate on an incoming call while I was walking did not help either. I couldn't feel a damn thing. After just 2 disappointing months I was again on a mobile phone hunting spree. This lead me to my next acquisition - the Blackberry 8320.

Blackberry. The mother of all messaging devices, the killer push-email application, tonnes of 3rd party softwares, an overall fantastic work horse... PROVIDED you have subscribed to the data plan! And guess what? I didn't know that! Using a Blackberry WITHOUT a data plan is like using an ordinary phone. You could only make/receive calls, text & surf only through WiFi. Forget about MMS, forget about using the internet on pay-per-use. You are better off using a bloody China-ripoff for all I care! Fustrated with my purchase, I had no choice but switch to Maxis & subscribe to the RM40 (5MB) data plan. The rollerball was great to use by the way & it was a breeze in navigating though the phone.

3 months past & I was forking out RM100+ average on calls on top of the data plan. I was getting fingerprints on the body's metallic paint finish & was constantly wiping the phone to get it smudge free. Texting with sweaty palms in this hot & humid weather of ours was a pain & I was getting bored with the phone already. Maybe unconsciously I was waiting for the Snap to appear. And IT DID. Lo & behold it was sitting there in one of the shop's display cabinet, just waiting for me to pick it up. The attendant saw me coming in & quickly offered me a chance to fiddle around with it, which of course I jumped on. And as they say, the rest was history...

I hope this mobile phone hopping phase of mine ends with the Snap. Good build, killer processor speed, great looks & once again a fantastic keyboard!

Class of 1990 Committe Meeting

Posted by Alan Heng

IT'S OFFICIAL! We will be having our 1st committee meeting casual meetup session next weekend (8/9 Aug) to discuss on the matter & hopefully form a team of dedicated and enthusiastic individuals willing to go the extra mile to ensure our successful reunion.

Attendees are :

Anyone else interested or have any change of plans on the dates proposed please confirm me in advance. Will get in touch with all of the above latest by next Friday. Till then, have a great weekend guys. :)

S.M. All Saints Class of 1990 Reunion Plans IN EFFECT!!!

Posted by Alan Heng

So, here we are folks! Finally I have really decided to push this All Saints Class of 1990 Reunion Party into effect. And I believe with the help & contribution from everyone else, success will be a stone's throw away!

I have also decided to move the original stand-alone S.M. All Saints Class of 1990 blog created a week ago here to cut down unneccessary maintenance of 2 seperate blogs (on my part... :P) & also in hopes to capture/highlight the committee's progress from fruition to completion, to the actual REUNION itself and hopefully to be able to continue on with many reunions ahead.

So guys, THIS IS IT! Please feel free to leave any comments here. Anything from your ideas for the reunion to your recollection of our time served in our beloved school... they are ALL welcomed here! :D

Updates will be posted soon. Till then, have a great day ahead & we shall see each other soon! :)

Back to blogging... AGAIN!

Posted by Alan Heng

WOW...

It has been over a month since my last post. In the blogging world, a month is probably TOO damn long to put a time frame onto. And NO, it wasn't because I was devastated over the sudden demise of Michael Jackson to the point that I can't put myself to write/blog or anything. It's just that I have been frequently "micro-blogging" on Twitter on a daily basis - just simple & straight forward thoughts I have at the time... updated on my mobile's Twitterberry app in turn auto-updates my Facebook too, killing two birds with one sto... A ROCK! :P

Therefore starting TODAY, I will commit myself to blog regularly. Of course my Twitter & Facebook activities will no doubt continue. But I must confess, if I do fall off the blogging-fever bandwagon again, you'll know where to find me. ;)