SHAH-AZZ, INCORPORATED

Let’s start from the beginning. 2 days ago, the classes started with the introduction of I.S. The speeches were focused on the way we show ourselves a.k.a. the appearance and style (how we dress, ho we walk, how we talk, how we eat...stuffs like that)...But it was on the second day that where all the fun begins. In the grooming session, we had to do the catwalk like a fashion model on the stage, so each of us had to pose their own style to impress the judges. They had to walk gracefully and with elegance. The judges then evaluated each of us.

I was given 6/10. That was low, but of course, for the fact that I was not really well dressed on that day, it was fair. I slacked on some points:

· I wore an oversized long sleeve shirt. I only had two of them. While the other one fits my body, it was slightly dirty so I couldn’t wear it. So I had to wear this one.

· My tie colour was not matched with the shirt. I did not have any other tie, except my secondary school tie, which was surely inappropriate.

· Unsuitable belt. My buckle was the sliding and gripping type (I did not how to describe this), not the usual pin-inside-the-hole type. I didn’t fasten the remaining end of my belt to one of the holder at my pants since it could not be reached.

· The BOOT. Yup, I did not wear a leather shoes or brogues or something similar; I didn’t have one. My usual casual footwear is the Nike ACG trekking shoes (the one I bought last year). I had to wear a soldier’s boot (maybe its Gen TH’s property) I found in our home storage.

This is me. It’s been a long time I hadn’t strap my necktie. Of course I last wore it during my past 2 month presentation but I’ve kept it like the way it was for many years without unknot it.

This is Jamal with his trademark sleepy eyes

I am lowering my oversized shirt sleeves and buttoned it. Notice that “bachelor’s bed” there. Jamal usually sleeps there. Ha-ha (kene ko lagi..)

Mr Azali a.k.a. Aleng was our driver of the day.

This was how big boss read newspaper in a car. So it seemed...

Darn...Had to button this first...

This was after the catwalk session, where the boys queue up and each person had to mention every other person’s name and their favourite fruit. If you asked me now, I’ve forgot their names already :p (except my course mates of course).

Some other boys and girls..

And again...

Yet again...

Coming to the third day (the final day of I.S.), things were getting even more interesting. Each person had to give a speech about their happy/sad/expectation things about I.S.

Yup, this was my turn. The only thing I changed my clothing was the shirt, and it was actually still slightly dirty. But on normal viewing, it appeared all white. I hope nobody noticed any ‘disparities’ of the shirt's color :p . I thought that I was chosen to become an emcee based on my speech during this session.

The pretty girls...

The handsome guys...

On the next activity, we were divided into small groups. We were given an egg, and some tools and protective layers to wrap around the egg. The objective was to not to break the egg when released it from a one-storey fall. The protective layers were some straws and masking tape. We, the would-be engineers should figure out the best and effective ways to protect it by using limited and/or unsuitable source.

You could see our well-crafted design. It looked like a sea urchin, or a caltrops, whatever that is.

This was our group’s turn to release the egg. You can see the streak of egg’s movement in the middle of this picture, while those at the floor were other groups’ used-to-be-an-egg. Our group’s egg only fractured a bit without actually breaking it, but we were still considered unqualified. In fact, none of the groups succeded in avoiding the egg from being smashed.

Now let’s skip to the main event. This was the day when every group from under different facilitators gathered and show whatever tricks they had in their sleeves.

This was all the VIPs and facilitators. The one who wore the orange clad is the MAN herself (she’s a woman, of course :p), the head of CEC, Dr. Noraini Kaprawi

It’s me and my co-host, Miss Maizatul (try not to get the wrong idea, if you know what I mean :p). She prepared all the speech text within a very short time span, and she prepared one for me as well, so I’m very thankful to her. Of course, I didn’t really read every words she wrote; I generated a lot of my own ideas on the dot, unless if I stumbled and blanked out. PS – Kpd Aleng...kene berusaha gigih lagi...hahahha

Some of the main actions from the participants:

Some from me and my co-host:

And the rest of the audiences:

To view the rest of the photo collections, visit my flickr.com. This is my 1^st ever photo entries in Flickr. I usually upload pictures to slide.com but it appeared that the website was blocked (includes Friendster) during office hours. Darn. Flickr and fotopages aren’t blocked at all. Sorry if a lot of photos were quite blurry and shaken. We took pictures without the flash, and we didn’t really know how to tinker some settings on the digital camera. We were not really professionals in photography, a complete n00bie :p. I would be grateful if any of you guys and girls could share your photo collections with me; I’ll upload to here as well.

Last but not least...Happy quarter century for me!!! Oh, my...i've become older..have to be wiser as well...Many thanks for all those wishes, by verbal, SMS or Friendster comments. Especially to the very 1^st person :)