auyongtc’s blog

I went to apply for US visa for my upcoming biz trip there. It’s quite a procedural thing - one that you should follow closely for smooth application, otherwise you may end up getting rejected. I’m relating here my experience with regards to a visa application for business visit purpose.

First, gotta go to any RHB Bank branch and bank in RM 380 to apply for US visa. Just go to the counter, and say you wanted to pay for US visa - they’ll know what to do for you - you’ll need to safeguard the pink slip and bring along during your interview at the US Embassy.

Then, fill up the online form that can be found at the US embassy site. Then print it out, and schedule for your interview at the embassy online. You must personally come to the embassy for an interview unless you’re exempted. Then bring all the supporting documents - your financial statements, payslips, company invitation letter to US visit, flight itinerary and booking information, etc (as much as you need to prove to them that you’re financially capable to survive and come back here). Also, attach a 2inch-by-2inch photograph of yourself, yes, it’s a square photo! Also, don’t forget your passport!

Then on the day of your interview, go there and be sure you reach there 30 mins before your scheduled time. Else you’ll end up in a long long queue. Go in, submit your documents, and wait for your turn to be interviewed at the counter, they’ll take down your fingerprints and if approved, they’ll tell you to collect your passport in a few working days time, otherwise they’ll return your passport immediately if rejected.

During collection, you can only collect between 2-3pm at the embassy entrance. Today I collected mine, and found out that they gave me 10 years multiple entry visa - cool!

So I needed an International Driving Permit. In Malaysia, this can be done either at the JPJ state headquarters (the one in Setapak for WP, Padang Jawa for Selangor) or any AAM branches (only if you’re a member of AAM). All you need is 2 passport-sized photographs, a copy of your NRIC, a copy of your current driving license (must be valid for at least 1 more year from the day you apply for IDP), fill up a form at JPJ and part with RM 150 - in return, you’ll get your IDP processed in about 10 minutes and given to you on the spot. The IDP lasts 1 year - yeap RM 150 for 1 year. Cannot get more than 1 year at one go. For more details, you can visit JPJ’s website.

So I went to JPJ at Setapak yesterday to get it done and renew my license that’s expiring this coming October. Reached there around 11.15am, the number of people at the Driving License department weren’t that bad. Renewed my license and got a new copy with my new ugly photo in it, and then my IDP 10 minutes later. Not too bad in terms of service and wait time…

But the IDP looks very much like a school report card, you know, in those manila card cover!
Here’s the photo of my IDP:

The front cover

The IDP content - list of countries this IDP can be used, the marking of which vehicle class I can drive and exclusions from countries (if any, due to violations) - this information is translated to various foreign languages over the next few pages.

The inside back cover - my particulars and the ugly photo

So yeah, now I’ve the license to thrill drive in most countries around the world!

So I bought my dad a new cellphone since his current one is really dying. It’s just a simple entry-level Sony Ericsson J300i.
Then I came home with it, and realized that it can play MP3 even as ringtone (thought that it was just an entry-level phone mar…)

And it’s so damn small and nice to hold… arghhh! I want his phone now! Grrrrrrr….

Wonder if I can do a bait and switch with my T610… kih kih kih

P/S - in case you’re wondering, I got him the white colour one

It’s April already… a quarter of 2005 is now behind us. It’s amazing how time flies…

In just over a month, tsewei will be back from her stint in Ithaca, NY…

My 2nd last semester in Inti is almost coming to an end…

My birthday is not too far away, soon I’ll be 24 (yeah, I’m born in the Year of ) …

And in a blink of an eye, it’ll be my turn to leave…

Sigh, how time really flies…

P/S - I’ll announce where I’ll be leaving when the time is right… stay tuned.

There are 55 minutes left till the end of Valentine’s Day this year as I start blogging this…

I’ve stayed home the whole day. Kinda good also, that I don’t contribute to the long reservation/waiting list at restaurants, long queues at cinemas, jam-packed crowd at every love spots. Yeah. this year I’m staying home for a quiet Valentine’s Day. Then again, that’s also because tsewei is still in Ithaca, New York, United Land of People Who Voted Bush Back Into Administration

One good thing about her being there, is that how accessible it is for me to shop for something to be sent to her - online shopping is really a breeze over there. Alas, due to the incompetence of Pos Malaysia (having closed for business during the week-long Chinese New Year holidays), cards from tsewei still did not reach me… haih… Malaysia bukan tak boleh, tapi Malaysia mana boleh?!

Okay, rants about Pos Malaysia aside, I feel like blogging about how we all began…

I knew tsewei pretty much due to coincidence, where she has the same full name as my godsister. Can’t remember exactly when we knew each other, but last documented date points to October 8th, 2003. Since the day we knew each other onwards, we’ve gotten along quite well. She became a friend that I can comfortably talk to, one that I can really relate to. She studies in NTU, Singapore and even though sometimes I feel that I have quite a liking in her, the distance between us is almost always a major turn-off. She’s still to spend the next 5 years in Singapore, both studies and working commitment.

People who knows me well, would know that I’m never a fan of long distance relationships (LDR). However, when we both seriously developed feelings for each other back in October 2004, it became really awkward. We were both fond of each other, yet we aren’t fans of LDR. Feelings grow day by day, but we kept telling ourselves that we won’t be together, due to the distance (I know it’s just 4 hours by car, but still… )

Then came the holiday season, when she came back to town. I picked her up from the train station, filled up her stomach with good dim sum for breakfast, and sent her home. The next day, we met up at KLCC for a lunch date and a nice time around the city (well, sort of nice, except that KL Monorail really sucked and packed during peak hours in the evening). After the 2 days spent with her, I then realised…

Realised that I should just throw away all my reservations about LDR, my worries about it all, and just go with my feeling. Heck, when I’ve nothing, I’ve really nothing to lose, right?

So I told tsewei of my feeling, my intention, and asked for her opinion. After all, this is not just about holding a girl’s hand and being attached. There need to be a lot of commitment and effort on both ends to really make this LDR work. I told, I expressed, and I asked. Then waited. And waited. And waited summore…

Then she agreed, feeling the same that this is really too good to not let it a try. And that, boys and girls, are quite how we started (politically correct, but may not be chronologically accurate). And then everything else started falling into place. Which was good. Really good.

And then before long, holiday season comes to an end, and she had to leave, not for Singapore, but to New York, for her student exchange programme (why they didn’t get me a hawt caucasian babe in exchange for tsewei still got me stumped, I think they did, but tsewei switched her flight to Timbuktu or something )

Things then became more challenging for us, indeed, with the 13 hours time difference and all. But we’re still pulling it through, thankfully. Thanks to the easy availability of technology, we’re now more connected than ever. There’s always Skype for voice calls, MSN for chats and webcam, e-mails, and SMS. Phew!

Luckily I did get the webcam that was on offer for free with a year’s subscription to PC.com magazine. CheeV and I both jumped on it when we saw that promotion in Midvalley. Didn’t have a use for the webcam back then. The most also was to chat with ChrisHoo and the Hooligans

I’m glad, that tsewei and I are both well equipped to survive this LDR. I just hope that we can really stay together through this all, to be together, once again.

To tsewei (and tsewei only, kids, close your eyes, or surf on to www.michaelooi.net),
Happy Valentine’s Day, dear. This time next year, it will be better. I’ll promise you that. I love you. *muakz*

Earlier today, I received a yellow envelope that was sent from Ithaca, New York. Of course, it was sent by my darling, tsewei, doing her student exchange programme at Ithaca College there.

It was a pleasant surprise indeed, for she kept mum about her sending out this card last week. At the time of receiving this card, I was still on MSN chatting with her… so it was a bit weird, first with me chatting with her when my sister announced to me from the living room that I’ve a letter!

It was a nice card tsewei bought, nicely depicting our long distance relationship. Here, I scanned the card:

The yellow envelope

The card’s front

The card’s contents

Sweet, isn’t it? Thanks dear! Made my day

It’s been really hot in Kuala Lumpur of late. I think a daytime average of 34-35°C ops:
And coz of that, I’ve been having cold showers for 3 days running now. Cold showers at home are pretty much a thing of the past since I moved back home from Nilai. As usual, with the convenience of a water heater switch, hot water showers are easily within reach at home here. However, the recent hot weather here is just starting to annoy me.

According to weather forecasts, it doesn’t look like there’s gonna be any different in the weather for the coming 7 days as well! ARGHHH!

My poor darling, tsewei is facing the exact opposite weather - it’s snowing more and more everyday there at Ithaca, NY. *hugz*

Last night, to usher in the year 2005, I invited some friends over to my house for a simple steamboat dinner. There were abundance of food and booze to last the whole night (and leftovers for the next two days to come, for sure! ). Luckily I had planned this simple event earlier, as most of the celebrations out there were cancelled as a respect to the recent tsunami disaster.

Penton drove both Andi Wu and Cheok Yeen over to my place by 8pm and we promptly got dinner started. Had countless rounds over the course of the night, and we ate so much, it’ll make any buffet proprietor shriek in horror at the sight of us eating!

Not gonna blog much further, nice weather today to sleep in… so here’s the group photo taken last night:

L->R: Andi Wu, Cheok Yeen, Penton, tsewei, auyongtc, Gigi the Pug

… was at tsewei’s house last night. Yeap, I was invited over, so I felt that I should get a bottle of wine over for the dinner. Since they have bottles of red wines at home already, I figured I’ll get a bottle of Port wine instead.

So we went down to SS2’s Denise wine shop but they were out of Ports, but the guy volunteered to check if their 1Utama branch had any left, no luck either. So we drove down to Desa Sri Hartamas to check out the Denise branch there. Not surprisingly, they’re out of Ports as well. When we asked both the shopkeepers if there are any wine shops nearby in the area, they both answered “no idea” in a very reluctant manner. And guess what? There’s another wine shop, El Vino, just right opposite Denise! WTF?

This is so unethical. It’s not like I purposely do not want to buy wines from that Denise branch, it’s just that they don’t have any of the particular wine that I wanted. Cmon, if you’re out of what I wanted, and if I asked if I can get any nearby, you’d help right? No… at least not them! Both tsewei and myself got rather pissed at them, and managed to get a bottle of Taylor’s tawny port from El Vino and rushed back to her home for dinner.

The dinner at her home was excellent. Food was great, and we had a nice time. And they’re gonna have turkey leftovers for the next few days to come (tse mei, no I’m not gonna come over for your leftover lunches )

Just as I was about to leave for home, her mom gave me a small xmas gift How sweet of her, thanks Mrs. Ng!

Oh yeah, my own xmas gift to myself is here! Well not quite, but it’s sitting in the nearby post office since it only arrived yesterday after I ordered it close to 3 weeks back. International shipping, highly unreliable on the schedule… so I’ll get to collect my prezzie on Boxing Day!
Curious of what it is? Stay tuned…

This morning, I experienced a refresher course reminding me why I’ll never want to work in this city of Kuala Lumpur. Let me relate it to you…

1) Queueing (or rather, the lack of it) at public transportation
So it seems, that there are stickers on the floor at the Putra LRT platform in KL Sentral (and definitely elsewhere too). So early in the morning, next train is just 3-5 minutes away. So I happily stand at the footprint markings to queue up. Train approaches, and then people started cutting queues, standing at the yellow box, in which to allow people to alight from the train… geez… from the 2nd in the queue, I became last, and I gave up on that train since it was so packed. The next train promptly arrived minutes later. Just before the train stops, some of those useless people who were sitting casually at the benches behind the queue, stood up, and cut the queues… blardy hell, I was fuming when I was this bitch in orange dress walk up nonchalantly without a care for the queue and went into the train first. All these never happen when I was commuting in Tokyo (speaking of which, I miss that place already… ). Indeed, we have first world facilities, but third world mentality. No wonder Moral Education syllabus has to be extended from Primary to Secondary Schools, and now to tertiary education as well… not like it helps anyway…

2) There is no good coffee served at early hours in the morning (and by that I mean 8am, not 4am!)
So what if we see Coffee Bean, Dome and Starfcuks everywhere we look in the city when one can’t even get a decent cup of vanilla latte at 8am on a Monday morning?! I really cannot believe it, is it really true that nobody drinks good coffee in the morning to jumpstart the workday?! But only drink coffee at these outlets during pose sessions with friends?! Gosh, this is crazy, we can brag how many outlets of Coffee Bean and Starfcuks we have in Kuala Lumpur, but none of them open until at least 9-10am! What’s the point?!
BTW, ice blended coffee drinks are for wimps

There you have it, 2 lessons I learned today…