SHAH-AZZ, INCORPORATED

Assalamualaikum...sepanjang bulan nih mmg banyak giler kenduri kendara kendari memember bersepah disekitar pelusuk Mesia nih...tapi satu persatu aku terlepas (atau saje melepaskan diri...gile xde duit maaa nak travel memanjang)...Bulan ni aje dikenalpasti 4 rakan taulan STARian dah sampai seteru...Danny Jendol, Haidar Lim Tat, Rujhan Kandos dan yg terakhir (utk bulan ni lerr) ialah sahabat sehouse sedorm seyellow, Mr Mohd Amin bin Mohd Hanafiah a.k.a. Bawang (tp name gelaran ni xberape lekat..nasib baik ko ekkk)...

Tp kan, mase aku dtg kenduri Amin ni yg berlangsung kat Parit Jawa, Muar, mmg dapat diperhatikan bahawa beliau memang membawangkan diri..gile bulat rupanye maupun perut...ahhaha jangan mareee Mr Amin...anyway, aku kalau xkerana si Aznan Boden yg amik aku kat BP, maybe yg ni pon aku tak pi gak...sbb aku pon baru tau last2 minit je nih...mujur Mr Nazlan Kachak (Jambu) yg call aku kate Boden keje kat sini...dah lame pulak tu, xnak bagitau aku oooooo...saje ngelat xnak blanja aku le nihh....seorang entepreneur yg berjaya membuka ladang ternakan kambing dan lembu yg sihat dan segar...

emm ape lagi ek...ohh ye, kedatangan rerakan taulan..selain Lan dan Boden, incik abang long kite, Mr Helmi Azri a.k.a. Arie Elephunk membuat special appearance menjadi tukang kipas Mr Amin...kelass gitu...aku sendiri dah lame xjumpe Arie nih, mau dah 4 tahun kot..kemdian lagi sekor mamat yg sesat dari hutan kalimantan, mr nyamuk aedes juga dtg menyebarkan wabak..haha..last sekali incik kutel..xtau sape lagi lps tuh..ops xlupe juga tukang paparazi, Mr Helmi jugak tapi bukan kembar Arie kerna beliau lebih Kalut dari biasa...hahaha...

How salty was my mouth is? Last week, I’ve been an emcee for my Effective Communication class. This time in Interpersonal Skills, the coordinator chose me to become an emcee for even a wider audience – approximately 80 participants in 3 different faculties. And there would be about 7 VIPs (this includes group facilitators), which one of them is the head of CEC, Dr N herself. Whoa...that was even more challenging, but I was (somehow) ready for it (actually, I thought that since I’ve been chosen, I could not say that I’m going to refuse it :p).

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 :)

PS - dah uplod dah..pih piihhh jenguk sane...

My last visit to cinema was about 2 months ago. That was during Spider-Man 3 came out. I hate to say this, but I didn’t feel impressed at all with this movie. After “wow” on the first instalment and “wow-wow” on the second, it’s “what the heck?” on this one. The fights, the camera angle was all the same and repetitive to the previous movies. Even with 3 baddies (eventually dropped to 2) and an alter ego (the other side of P.P.), it lacked...something...I don’t know, but it clearly didn’t give me that “wow” factor...

Recently, Jamal and I watched “Die Hard 4.0”.It wasn’t been originally planned, but since we need to kill off some time before going back to our home, we thought that this was a good idea. Initially, “Transformers” came to our mind but the show time was too late for us. Never mind. In fact, I always want to watch DH4.0 at one point. As you know, my favourite movie genre is those with actions, full of guns, explosions, and someone who kicks some ass. I’ve watched the previous trilogy before, so I am quite familiar with John McClane’s blabby mouth. My personal favourite is the 2^nd, the one with the plane crash. It is so horrendous, so tragic that I too, cursed that blasted no good son of a ****h bad guy that responsible for that.Grr...

Ok, back to 4.0. This time, it is about cyber-terrorism. Yup, hackers and stuffs like that. But this is a full-blown attack from every direction, so devastating that almost everything, like the military, stock market, traffic flow, mass media, power grids, even the White House has been taken over by them...Of course, with this McClane guy, he knows the way of reversing all of this with his typical style of saving good guys and killing baddies.

There is one scene, almost as tragic as the 2^nd movie’s plane crash, at the road tunnel (ala SMART tunnel or Karak tunnel). Both of the lanes is closed to traffic (the terrorist did that, of course), but McClane and that kid, Mat Farrell somehow managed to get through. Then the terrorist open the traffic from the other side, so all those cars come through and against them. McClane has to U-turn back or they’ll be hit by those cars. But it doesn’t stop there. Now the terrorist redirects traffic flow from this side to enter the same tunnel as the one McClane (and the entire opposite car) trying to exit. That means, both side are entering the same tunnel and they’ll surely collide against each other! To add the misery, the tunnel’s light is turned off by the terrorist, and all the drivers didn’t have the time to switch on their headlights, so it is a complete darkness. As a result...can’t tell, spoilers...ha-ha...but are McClane and Farrell safe?

Two of my favourite scenes are 1) when McClane drive a car up a ramp and then fleeing it before it collides with the airborne helicopter, thus destroying it. 2) The jetfighter-truck chase, where McClane has to avoid missiles from the jet. Eventually, McClane hopped on the jet and hopped back to the road when it was going to blow.

It’s been a long time I haven’t seen these kinds of action movies, and this one is simply mind-blowing...I’ll rate 4.75 out of 5. If you like raw action, with less CGI (almost non-existence), this is the movie I would recommend to you.

So what about “Transformers”? It has been one of my favourite cartoons during my wet nose year. That was a long time ago, so I forgot the conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons. Will this movie help me to remember those nostalgic moments?

I took the liberty of watching it for the 1^st time in my life at the IMAX cinema at Berjaya Times Square. (and I watched it alone, pity me ;|) I knew a little about IMAX. It claimed that it has 5 times larger screen size than what normal cinemas has. It is also said that it has separated soundtracks from the film so surely it would have a high quality audio. And finally, the ticket price is twice as expensive as the normal cinema tickets. So it is worth it?

Yup, when I entered and took a seat (I’ve got an almost middle section of the seat, so this supposed to be my almost total IMAX experience), it can be seen that the screen is large. So ok, nice. But before the movie starts, it stated on the screen that this movie “is not an IMAX experience movie”. Huh? What is the prerequisite for a movie to be an IMAX experience movie? 3Ds? rocking chair? special goggles?

My first wow factor was the helicopter scene. The one when we finally see something transformed into a robot for a first time. Yes, you can hear the trademark transform sound. The EMP shockwave released by Blackout (that the chopper's name) that shattered everything surrounds him is so cool, and the movement is reminiscent of the ones in MechWarrior-series computer games, which I like. The sound when he thumps this feet to the ground, when his torso turns, when he starts blowing the base up. I have to say, wowwowowowowww!!!

Another one of my wow factor is when Optimus Prime arrived for the 1^st time as a truck and transformed to himself, together with the rest of the Autobots in front of that Sam Witwicky kid and his chick (that’s one hot stuff). And then, when we see Megatron for the 1^st time at Sector 7, then the final battle scene...that was spectacular.

However, after I exited the theatre, I DID NOT feel same as like when after I watched 4.0. Yup, sadly, I exited with the feeling of “hmmm...ok" Why is that so? Don’t get me wrong. The movie is great. It is even greater when you are a die-hard or a fanatic fan of the cartoon or the comic, or even the toys. But there’s one factor that snaps almost everything of my Transformer experience.

It’s the excessive shake of the video camera. It was SO ANNOYING.

It was so apparent on most of the fast-paced scene. It shakes too much that I thought “Why the heck are they doing this? They couldn’t afford to buy a Steadycam or what? Even Die Hard with its raw action has more stable view than this.

Then, there’s too much alternating scene-to-scene. I mean, switching from one scene to another, then switch again, and vice-versa. Combined with the above camera-shake-thing, this multiplies my irritation tenfold. Of course, you movie-lovers might say that I should review the storyline itself, not these technical movie issues. Hey, it snaps my experience, what could I do? If you like it, that’s good. I DON’T LIKE IT.

And why Megatron dies so easily? I thought “That’s it? Shoving that cube to his chest and he’s dead?”...and It’s not because that Optimus killed him, its Sam. I read that there would be sequels for this movie and yet, the movie’s main antagonist will no longer appear. Maybe Starscream is the new leader, or a Megatron revival?

Another thing that saddens me is that this movie and the sequels did not and will not have the appearance of my favourite Transformer robot of all time. Yup, it is one of the factors I actually watched a Transformer TV-series cartoon often, and the one I would always want to have as my favourite toy.

The Omega Supreme.

Of course, I did not really expect that Omega will show up as probably the producer’s thought that the size and complexity will surely ramp up their production budget. I also read that both Hasbro and Takara no longer have the rights to reissue this robot. But still, if Omega did show up, he could kick Megatron’s butt and the rest of the Decepticon in the movie with a single flick of his ‘fingers’ (the rocket’s base stabilizer...I dunno the actual name), or blast with his plasma from the tip of his another hand (the rocket’s head), then the movie will end too quickly: p

I would rate this one 4 out of 5. A bit low you say? I would give a perfect 5 stars if that camera shakes didn’t annoy me. Watching in an IMAX theatre didn’t help that much. After all, for this movie, the difference is that IMAX has a larger screen than normal cinema, nothing special. Hopefully you would find this review a bit helpful.

One of the most important requirements for any company to recruit would-be-workers is that one should be able to speak and write in English...Both of these are not my strong points.

Yeah, you have read some of my entries written in English but I believe that it isn't perfect...I sometimes confused with the tenses that should be used (past-present-future).I also often take a lot of time to write in English as I am thinking whether I use the correct word or if my sentence is in proper order. In fact, more often than not, I would open my CIDE dictionary, or googled for some nice, suitable words to be used in my writings.

Speaking is always one of my weak links, either in Bahasa or English. I am not able to generate a spontaneous idea if someone asks me or if I have to speak on the dot. I need some time to think of how should I arrange the words or what kind of word to be used. I do not always stutter of stammer, or even flinch, but of course, I sometimes become ‘lost in transition’ due to shyness or nervous. So there is sometimes I pause a while and continue while my brain keeps inserting, deleting, arranging and replacing some words simultaneously within nanoseconds! (Yeah rigghhtttt..)

So when there was one day, I were given the chance to become an emcee (MC or Master of Ceremony) of my course mates’ group presentation, I thought whether I could really do it. My job was to open the ceremony, telling the rules and regulations, introducing and welcoming the group, and such. Being an emcee was supposed to be easier to speak than a direct on the dot speech as I’ve already thought of some “presets” of words which I heard from TVs. However, I worried about whether I would successfully tell the message, or become a laughing stock for many years to come (that’s overly exaggerated, I know, but it close enough). The nice thing was that I didn’t do it alone; there was also my partner whom we took turns giving speeches on certain parts.

Of course, when it comes to my turn, I thought of some different words to speak so it would not become generic and repetitive. But on the same time, I thought that I was blabbering nonsense. This was subjective, so my course mates might think otherwise, ha-ha. These sentences were between preplanned and impulsive:

“How does it feel to be the first group to present?”

“Don’t you feel nervous or something?”

“Alright, let’s hear it from this group. Give [them] a clap, please.”

“Nice presentation, but I think it’s kind of long, don’t you think so?”

“[Since there’s no QA session], you are spared this time”

“Do you own a BMW? Do you plan to own one?”

“I wish I could own one of those [BMW vehicle] one day”

“Each of your group have chosen only one person. Who could be that lucky person is?”

“I hope that you could rate this group a bit higher, because this is MY group [chuckles]”

“Awesome, brilliant guys. [no, I’m not biased: p]”

“I’ll give my vote to him; he is much better than me”

“For the next [remaining] two groups, I have good news and bad news. Which one you want to hear first?”

Hmm…not bad I think. I think I’ll try it again some other time when there is a chance.