the week after my cuzzie visit, my schedule at work became more packed than ever. i was in Bangi conducting a system training class whole day Tuesday, and i only found out that evening that i need to go outstation sporadically for the next coupla days.
and i had to be in Penang on friday.
having discussed the schedule with my assistant Amin, we decided that both of us should be there for the first session of this ‘roadshow’. me being the presenter, and him being the apprentice. due to the short notice, we had very little time to prepare the mini manuals needed for the stuff we were going to demonstrate, and we barely finished before embarking on our drive up Thursday afternoon. Amin drove of course :); his perdana v6 was in better shape than any of my cars.
it rained quite a bit throughout the drive. the mood was dreary, but we managed to counter the effect by talking about a lotta things. guy stuff mostly. colleagues should be treated as friends, even if they’re your subordinates. since i’m not good at scolding people, this would be a better alternative.
when we reached the island, it took a bit to get our bearings right. i had to step up my role as navigator since Amin needed to pay full attention to the mad Penang drivers. after some turns here and there, we finally reached our destination: The Sheraton. working with my company does have some perks. 😛 we were each settled into separate Deluxe Rooms. needless to say, it was very very nice.
that night we took flight to Batu Ferringhi (not sure i spelled that right) to grab some DVDs for our other colleagues. well, actually Amin did. i just tagged along. then we went back to town to sate our hunger with Line Clear’s nasi kandar, located near The Oriental hotel. it was gewd.. very gewd. i rarely eat nasi kandar, but this one was just mind blowing. loved the fried chicken.
after dinner, we just went back to our rooms and chilled. i had my copy of Inkheart, which my cuzzies recommended, to read in bed. the story is a bit too slow for me, so i could only read 2-3 chapters at a time before i’m unable to resist the urge to close my eyes. slow, but good. finished it the next day before we left for home.
i was also tempted to call Fiena, an old college mate who now lives in Penang. i think. but there wasn’t much time for me to go out and meet people, so there wasn’t any point in doing so. next time perhaps.
in the morning we were up bright and early for our session. it was supposed to be in the afternoon, but we managed to squeeze in our material before lunch and was able to leave for home early. even so, it was dark when we got back to KL, with the heavy rain pounding at us all the way south. still, there was enough time to meet up with Merv for dinner at Chili’s. his treat. thanks Merv. 🙂