Wednesday 26 July 2017

Melaka Getaway 2017, Day 2

Melaka Getaway 2017 Day 2





Day 2, Sunday, 16th July 2017


As told previously in my last post, we ended up playing Monopoly till it passed midnight. The last time I played this board game was when I was 10, 11, I’m not so sure. So, after a brief explanation of its rules, we started playing.

Note: I was actually exhausted from the day we’d spent and couldn’t wait to hit the sack as soon as possible. I was sleepy and thought the game should only take roughly around an hour or two, tops – then 4 hours later into the game, I realised that the thought was bloody ridiculous! LOL


Quickly into the game, all of us got hyped but still humble, not showing our true colours yet and prayed for good luck in securing on as many properties before others can. Yun, in particular was VERY LUCKY :P. She managed to buy the most places and we all could predict that this was going to be trouble. She meant business! She was acting quiet and all but I just knew she was waiting for others to slip and with the secretly-hidden hopeful expression she was having on her face, I was shitting myself not to be one of the victims.


I personally secured a few properties and how lucky I was that I was able to put up a few ‘houses’ on some of them. I was even luckier, thanks to Zi and Nazri that one of my primary properties was ‘visited’ by them twice, or was it thrice? I don’t know, I couldn’t remember maybe due to the evil and satisfying feeling to see them handed me their money and even caused them to sell off one of their properties to the bank.


I felt alive, I didn’t feel sleepy anymore. But I was just worried that the game might not end. Until, at one point … the dice were rolled, Zi and Nazri made their move, tap tap tap tap and TAP, they landed on one of my most expensive properties. That had caused them BANKRUPTCY! That’s when the game ended and we called it a night! I think we were all kind of pissed with one another. Every time someone was about to roll the dice, everybody else was praying for the worst for them. Indeed, there’s no friends in Monopoly. No hard feelings, just simply business. LOL. Imagine if we used actual money? I might ended up killing my closest friends to get away from paying them. JK
After just a few hours of sleep, Kamil and I woke up to get everyone breakfast. The initial plan was to get some roti canai but the queen in the house demanded for nasi lemak. If you read my first post on Melaka Getaway 2017, you can easily guess who that person was :P


So at 7am Kamil and I drove out searching for our breakfast not having a clue where to head to. Looking out of the window seeing one or two stalls were only starting to open up – I thought maybe we were a wee bit too early. But luckily we found a couple of shops that sell roti canai AND nasi lemak (Thank God!) on the route heading to Masjid Tanah (about a 5-minute-drive from our accommodation).

Roti kosong and roti telur!


Kamil and I decided to have breakfast there. So we both ordered roti kosong and roti telur. Where I come from these are usually served with dhal, curry and/or sambal. But there they offered other options too including kuah asam pedas and rendang. I didn’t feel like trying these combination and played safe and just ordered the usual dhal and sambal as my sides. They were good! We chilled for a little while and got a packet of nasi lemak and the rest of the roti canai for the rest of the guys back at the house. Also, it was kind of strange to me that they didn’t even wrap the roti canai in any paper sheet or anything. They just chuck them into a normal plastic bag. Like, seriously, why?


So once we got home, some of the guys were already up and had their breakfast. Oh by the by, the queen was mad at us for not buying 2 fried eggs for her nasi lemak. Hmmmm


All of us started to sit down and chat then suddenly, one of my mates sat in front of the Monopoly board and asked us all to play. I was like, “You’ve gotta be kidding me?!” I was actually reluctant to play but I had so much fun robbing other people’s money the night before I figured I might get lucky again.
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I WAS WRONG! LOL


I had a poor start and other people were all fired up with all of their purchases. I think they had prayed so damn hard after the first game and thought that God had answered their prayers or something. Kamil used black magic, I thought. Or since he donated his blood the previous day, the blood demon might have helped him when he acquired all four stations (KLIA, KLIA2, Pudu and KL Sentral). In the beginning we were like “Okay, so what?” But little did we know, it was jackpot for him. We kept on landing on the stations and according to the rules, if a player controlled all 4 stations, others that landed on any of his/her station would have to pay 2,000 dollars! It was a goldmine! He was slowly enjoying his fortune.


The rest of us started to increase the value of our properties by putting up 2-4 houses but we weren’t very lucky. My fate was turned 180 degrees from the night before. My friends didn’t know this but I almost tried to make an accidental fall on the board to create a mess so that the game would end. Don’t judge me! I was left with 2 million dollars and I had to get pass through the properties that some costed up to 11 million dollars. I was on the verge of bankruptcy. I was sad and constantly asking God to save me! And then, someone landed on one of my expensive properties. I got some money… to survive a couple more rounds. Then suddenly, Kamil also landed on one of my properties and had to pay me 8 million dollars! We, the very good friends as we were, obviously laughed our asses off and we somehow felt like justice had prevailed after all the money we had given him every freaking time we landed on his stations. Anyway, it wasn’t over! His next turn saw him landed on Yun’s most expensive property and had to cash out another 11 million dollars!

Seconds after he had to spend the total of 19 million dollars to Yun and I


Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to get to see Kamil weep as it was almost lunch time and as planned, Kamil, Yun, Yan and I were responsible of cooking lunch for that day. Kamil were in charge of cooking sambal udang and both the girls were on salads. I, on the other hand, was asked to cook ayam lemak cili api – simple dish but with a slight twist. Ayam lemak cili api that I usually eat, tend to be very spicy. After all, it is called, ayam lemak cili api. I would use about 27 chilies for one and a half chicken worth of the dish. But Yan and Zi can’t tolerate that level of spiciness so especially for them I just used 13 chilies. I had fun spending time in the kitchen. We were fast (maybe because we were really that hungry) and everything went smoothly.

The last time I cooked ayam masak cili api was in mid-2015

Our lunch!


After lunch, I performed my prayers and soon I dosed off for a couple of hours. When I woke up, some of the guys went out to Klebang Beach again and left Yan, Ezad and Yun playing cards (No, no. Not Monopoly, thank God!) I even decided to join them playing UNO. I couldn’t remember the rules of playing this game and didn’t know how to work on any strategy to win. So, I just went with the flow and hoped for the best – as previously with Monopoly it worked out great for me. This time, it wasn’t that great. Final rounds were left between Yan and I. You see, I am not an evil person. I played for fun and tried to enjoy my time before dinner time. Yan unfortunately, had planned for the opposite. She waited till the last minute to end the game in a way that left me speechless. She even smiled and jumped off the floor as soon as she won the game. I was left lying down on the floor, defeated, cheated and hurt. Heartbroken.


Then came dinner time and Dinie and Zi were the main chefs for that night. I was frankly, still full from lunch but once dinner was served, I became hungry again. LOL.


Our dinner!


Unfortunately as soon after that, Yan and Ezad had to make a move to KL. They had to work on the following day. It was brief, but at least we got the chance to spend some time all together.

Photo of them before Ezan and Yan leave


Later on that night, we all wanted to get some fresh air and were thinking of having drinks near the town centre. But somehow, we ended up taking a little detour and stopped by at Jonker Walk for a bit. The timing was off – most of the stalls were closing up but we did manage to see what products were sold – mostly phone casings and beverages and snacks. Nothing much to experience though. Should have planned to come sooner.

Jonker Walk


Love the lights


COB


There were a few stalls that were still open


After that we stopped at a mamak nearby for a little chit chat and drinks. That’s what I love about the gang. Anywhere we go, we will always ended up talking and reminiscing about our past. Always brings back memories, and the conversation even continued for some of us when we reached back to our accommodation – a good way to end the night, our last night there.


To be continued ...



Monday 24 July 2017

Melaka Getaway 2017


Melaka Getaway 2017



So it was that time of the year again – the CL annual getaway had finally arrived. After months of long and indecisive discussions, we had decided to spend it in Melaka again, for the second year running! LOL But hey, after all, like we always said, it’s not always the place that matters, but the people you’re with ;) Unfortunately Zack, Syasya and Syuk were not able to join us this time so fingers crossed that next year we’ll have the complete group together!


Day 1, Saturday, 15th July 2017

Kamil, Yun, Zi, Ezad and Yan agreed to have a brief meet up and breakfast at my place supposedly at 7.30am. Knowing them so well I knew 7.30am was just a little bit too ambitious, no, in fact, surreal. But, that was fine, it eventually gave me some time to rest a little bit longer as I was still exhausted from the busy day I had the day before. Saoxy, Dinie and Nazri were not with us that morning but joined us sometime later in the afternoon.
Kamil was the first to arrive among the rest and as promised he brought some packets of nasi lemak He was even sweet enough to have brought along his homemade fried noodles as well. Those, alongside with everything else prepared by my ever so lovely mom, were our breakfast for that day. I was just hoping that Zi was happy with the spread as earlier that morning she stressed that she was really hungry. She’s small but oh my, she definitely has quite an appetite – unusual even, nasi lemak with soy sauce? Are you kidding me? :P


Lovely!

Happy faces :)


Right after breakfast, we then headed straight to Melaka but actually had nothing much planned out till we could check-in to our accommodation. So, we all decided to visit Dataran Pahlawan where on that day, the Ekspresi Negaraku carnival was held. Kamil, a generous lad he is, saw a booth for blood donation. Okay, I couldn’t get my head around this fact because I was not paying much attention when he told us this, but somehow his blood is kind of rare, so he feels he should always donate whenever he has the chance – a vampire’s dream companion, don’t you think? But, that’s good of him!

Kamil donating his rare superman blood?

The event




Dataran Pahlawan. Actually my second time here.






One of the displays that caught our attention


A group of dancers performing the traditional dance.



I was bored the fastest compared to my friends and thank God as soon as Kamil had completed his blood donation we all drove on to Tesco supermarket to buy some groceries. Nazri had also agreed to meet us there. Zi, our elected event treasurer was ever so scary being so diligent with the list of things to be bought - come on Zi, it’s our holiday, loose up a little would you? :P But glad that she was strict and meticulous as we had almost everything that we wanted and spent below our budget. Good job Zi!



All of this – just over RM200!



So, shopping’s done and we went straight to our accommodation at Klebang. Well, the rest did – some of us needed to grab lunch!

The house
















When I first arrived at the house, I was delighted to see that it was clean and everything seemed to be exactly as described from the site we booked it. The price was affordable as well – RM400/night and it can accommodate around 15 people max. The only thing I would like the owner to improve on in the future is installing an air-conditioner at the living room – we were all complaining on how warm it was in the living room! Oh, the other thing is to replace the old stove to something more user friendly. We do not want to risk our eye brows to get burned off every bloody time when we try to switch it on using matches/ lighter.


Don't be fooled















One of the shared toilets on the upper floor


Pretty spacious
One of the bedrooms upstairs

Change this FGS!


We all had our lunch and chat a little bit before taking some rest while waiting for Saoxy and Dinie to reach the house. Then, once both of them had arrived, we did the most cliché thing to do when people go and visit Klebang.



Coconut shake



Yes, that’s right. We tried the coconut shake. It was my first try and to be honest, for me it didn’t taste that amazing. It was not terrible, don’t get me wrong but it wasn’t something that I would get excited about. According to Yan, the best coconut shake could be found somewhere near Batu Berendam but usually they are sold out by 3pm – so, maybe next time.

We then strolled a bit along the beach. The beach was calm and people seemed to be enjoying their time, relaxing and everything looked so at peace – well, then, entered us lot LOL. We took photos and ran around like bunch of kids and I constantly needed to remind myself to behave and that we’re in our late 20s. But who cares? We’re just enjoying ourselves and blowing off some steam!

Glad it was not scorching hot. The breeze was rather pleasant





Our group photo. A couple of the visitors there had to take 5-6 shots of us on 2-3 different angles. Felt sorry they had to bear with us LOL




Yan’s #hipster-ish sign. After a few tries, this was the best she could do. Seriously Yan? SMH :P

I really enjoyed the time we had on the beach. I kind of wished we could hang out a little bit longer but it was almost 6 and we all agreed to have an early ikan bakar dinner at Alai. It was a sound decision to have reached there early as we did not had any problems finding the parking spots for our cars. Glad we didn’t waste time on that else the longer we would have to wait to get to eat and some of us (Zi in particular) will get angry if that were to happen.

So, here we had the choice of eating the seafood dishes with either normal plain rice or nasi lemak. I never had ikan bakar with nasi lemak before so I decided to give it a go. It was good but I just had one teeny – tiny complaint – in this case the nasi lemak was in fact teeny – tiny! Why are they so freaking small?! I think even a two-year old could eat 10 of those and still be starving. Okay, I might be over-exaggerating but you get the point, right? All in all, we were satisfied with the food and for me it was amazingly cheap. Everything we ordered only cost us around RM160. Our tummies were happy and we headed back to our accommodation.


Since I don’t consume other seafood we ordered, this fish was my primary target!


Before




After


Overall we had a good day and a pretty decent evening to end our first day. But then, at home, we sat down together and started playing MONOPOLY. That, guys, changed everything. Enemies created, backs stabbed, nightmares and tension occurred. Monopoly…. will be continued in the next post.



We didn’t know what we’re getting ourselves into



To be continued...