7th Equatorial Cameron Highlands Scrabble Tournament

Good news: Made top 10

Bad news: Rating drop below Kong Chock Heng

Ugly news: 9 wins out of 18, way out of my history (Horrible)

Uglier news: Tony sim dropped to 5th after playing nigel 7 times (including the last game) and only drawing 3 blanks out of a possible 14.

Ugliest news: now have to wait and see who drops out of Causeway

Better news: I am ahead of Vannitha in the pecking order.

Steamboat dinner

I will let the pictures do the talking

No cheesecake!!!

No cheesecakes at the next tea break after lunch, at least there are some nice fruit tarts

Cheesecake!!!!!!

I don't need anything else for tea breaks, just 3 slices of cheesecake between each game.
And tea, of course

Starting Day 2

Trying to be an ascetic at Breakfast. Started with salad with boiled eggs and cold cut. Moved on to Miso soup and Teo Chew porridge. Ended with oats, milk, fruits, and seeds.

Simulating cold morning dew

It is early morning in Cameron highlands, I woke up too late to experience walking on cold morning dew but here is my backup plan

Step 1: Leave your sandals out on the balcony.
Step 2: Hope it rains
Step 3: Make sure that it is wet
Step 4: Put on your sandals
Step 5: Jump and ooh and aah your way to breakfast in your sandals

Actually, the only reason why I left my sandals out on the balcony can be explained by Tony and Ricky.

This is not a Scrabble Tournament. It is a Gluttony Festival.

No barbecue dinner but judicious selection of tablemates revealed that we had more women on our table hence more food for the guys. In the end it turns out to be too much food.

Starters were Mediterranean tuna salad and cream of lentil soup.

The main course which rolled out like an assembly line included corn on cob, roast beef, roast chicken, steam broccoli in light oyster sauce, fried rice, salmon with chili paste and deveined prawn with chesse.

Dessert, which was procastinating, turned out to be Chocolate pudding in sweetened milk and milo powder. (sorry, but I finished mine before I even remember to take any photos)

Stay tune for Day 2 report on gluttony, screw the games.

At The Hotel

After getting to the hotel, everyone more or less congregated around the lobby trying to leach onto Tan Jin Chor Wifi but that didn't work (couldn't bridge the connection between his internet connection and setting up a wifi network using his computer). At RM10 for 90 minutes, you definitely get less value for money compared to Penang Open.

Anyway, will probably test out if I can use my laptop to bridge such a connection and collect fees from the other for schmoozing on my laptop. I am typing this out in my room at the moment before going downstairs to buy the connection and uploading all this thing to my blog later today (possibly after the evening games and dinner and the results are posted). KC thumbdrive also infected my computer with a Trojan horse (thank god for macafee!!!)

At least Ganesh is no where to be seen (don't know why), so thankfully will try to win it by winging it against Nigel, Tony, Vannitha, Jocelyn, John, etc. (Post day 2 note: after all those injust draws against me, i want my run of tiles at the next tournament)

Did go swimming 1 hour before the tournament started.
1st Mistake: didn't warm up
2nd mistake: tried to swim too many laps too fast (squeezed in 25-30 laps in a 5m pool in 40 minutes, a woeful effort by anyone's standard)
3rd mistake: tried to correct every single stroking of every style (and I do mean freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly aka buttersink and backstroke)
Net results: my triceps and frontal pecs hurt like hell, couldn't even reach over or under my shoulders to scrub my back when I returned back to shower.

Here to all the luck I need to win this tournament. Truth is, I just want to be able to retain top 10 again since I have my streak going back to 2003. Although the optimal challenge would be top 5, anything in the top 2 would be icing on the cake.

Signing off for now.

PS: I did offer some incense at the Guan Di temple near Tringkap on the way up after lunch, I do like Guan Gong a lot.

5ive

(tagged by Janvier Soldat)


5 Things In Our Bag:
Dell Inspiron 1520 Laptop
Two copies of the Economists weeklies
Collins Scrabble Tournament & Club Wordlist
Salmon fish Oil
Spare Spectacles

5 Things In Our Wallet:
Singapore EZlink public transport card
10 namecards
Singapore currency
Two ATM cards
spare change

5 Thing We Like Most In Our Room:
Books & Manga collection
CD and DVD collection
newspaper clippings (will need to paste them in a scrapbook soon)
Sarongs
Porn collection

5 Things We'd Like To Try:
Bungee-jumping
Archery
Getting Lost
Making the Finals of any television talent reality show
Migrating to Japan/USA

5 Things We're Doing Now:
Updating our blog
Driving to Cameron Highlands
Talking to passengers
Resting At Tapah reststop (hence the free Wifi to update my blog)
Going to sleep in the car when my co-driver takes over.

Coordinating all 5ive meme with Fridays

5 Victims Tagged:
Syenite
Sonic
Fooie
Hubert
Alpha

On the way to cameron highlands

Driving along with Nigel and Jocelyn in my car.
currently taking a break at the Tapah northbound stop and testing out the Wifi here (it works but it is an unsecured network so I better break off soon after checking my email).

Maybe I will let Nigel take over as the driver.

No contact from Alex Tan's car.

Mum's car broke down......

happened on Monday (around 4.30 pm), I was humming along at work until my office phone squealed in its little cubicle and mum was at the other end huffing and puffing her message down my eardrum.

"Boy....car on fire, i am getting daddy out of the car after this phone call. You come now in your Kelissa to pick both of us and you wait here for the AAM towtruck, I calling them after this phone call. You come ah! remember to come ah!......We are at the (incomprehensible Teochew gibberish).....What! you don't know where?!....We are under Parliament! Guo Hui! Right go to Jalan Kuching, Left go the Kenny Hill.....Remember ah! Jalan Parliament." *Toot*

And so begins the crawl to reach my parents (I was expecting at least a fire brigade to hose down a burning car but that would be bad karma). Arrived to see no smoke, dad outside the car about 5 meters away, mum gesturing at some good samaritan (or wandering mechanic). If the car got burnt, at least I wouldn't have to transfer all her luggage into my undersize Kelissa (which leaves only room for 2 passengers, guess who got left out).

So, she swapped this and that and whoopeedo, I am left out in the middle of the inner ring road with her handphone, the AAM contact number. so for the next 30 minutes, I am there doing nothing except car-watching and gathering empirical data for an ad-hoc survey of 'how many car slow down just to see your car stuck on the side of the road' (data could not be utilised as results may have been compounded by rush hour traffic jam); while waiting for a tow truck. And what comes up the road? The AAM friendly Mechanic, Shukri, on his motorbike.

Spend another 30 minutes on the phone trying to get the AAM membership number for Shukri to dispatch a towtruck.....and 10 minutes later it arrives and I get to overserve/participate/push/heave/just move, you heap of %^&*#)(#$!)^%$# junk/car nehind the tow truck for tow operations.

Another 40 minutes in a suspension-less tow truck on the way back to Selayang via Jalan Kuching and I can tell you I sat through purgatory......(After 2 days of ferrying around my parents between morning, lunch hours and evening session, I requalify the earlier torture as off-road torture on city highway. Having parents in your car is really Hell!!!!)

Praying that the car get fixed soon.

Typical Cheahlessness

Borrow a copy of a CD from Cheah back at the WWAD tournament last weekend.
I finally got around to scrutinizing the CD on Wednesday,

discover all 12 tracks - good
check discrography listed on cduniverse, 11 tracks - WTF?!
Call Cheah, he answers the phone - okay
He is flabbergasted by the additional track - WTF?!
Now keenly hunting the Internet for the correct discography because Cheah hasn't send me a copy of the discography in his possession yet.

All I got for my trouble is......

A party Scrabble set (well, at least the Pro-tiles in the set can be cannabalize for future sets.

Cost:
train ticket RM 78
Breakfast : RM18
Transport: RM 8
Food: RM 15

The surprise of running into psike at the playing venue: Priceless (hooked him up with Cheah for boardgaming session, btw)

It pays to be a freeloader.

Not going this year

Goods news: I suck at Scrabble.

Bad news: I lost the last game. It was for the right to be the reserve for the WSC team.

Ugly news: I practically was trying to give the game away (stupid challenge)

Interesting news: The debate between Ganesh and Vannitha over words and learning and everything else in between.

Well, now that everything is over.
We are all waiting for John Lam to spit out generate the ratings from Penang.
My initial estimate (final results will definitely vary) is that Suanne will be in front of me and Pui in the rating and go the the WSC.

Typing this out in the hotel lobby while the listening to the Chingay performance outside on Jalan Bukit Bintang, first time they are holding this one here to after a lapse of 10+ years since my high school years.

Malaysian National Championship Day 1

Good news: won the first 6 games

Bad news: lost the next 3 games

Ugly news: I have negative spread!!!??? HOW? HOW? HOW?

Interesting news: get-together stories with Alex, Nigel, Jocelyn, Vannitha and Ganesh

See if you can figure out who these characters are:

1. the lousy navigator
2. the motion sickness guy on the way down from cameron highlands
3. the human windscreen wipers in his rear-view mirror & passenger seats (once on the trip to cameron highlands and another on the way to Bertam)
4. the dancing troupe
5. the speedsters
6. the guy who is always getting locked in in Singapore when he comes for Scrabble tournament
7. The people who have walked from the ferry terminal to the City BayView Hotel (name at least 3 of them)
8. the second 2007 WSC representative.