New Year Experience

"5...4...3...2...1...HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!" That's how most of world celebrated the coming of the new year. Not me, not the small group of friends that was with me for the few hours. Let's just rewind this to December 31st 2008...

James, Kheng Swee and I readily got ourselves after class for the long journey ahead of us, a journey into the heart of the beast, into the jungle of modernisation, a journey to the island of Penang. We took the taxi, bus, ferry and finally Rapid Penang to the Queensbay Mall.

Okay, this is where the fun part starts. During the entire journey, there's an ongoing debate about what do guys need to do or have to be able to win a gal's heart. And the debate kind of went awry and climaxed during our late lunch because I wanted to stay at the mall and catch a movie but Kheng Swee was concerned about the plans that were made. Note that this particular topic had been talked over and over again without relent from both sides.

"Isaac, you have gotta put yourself into other people's shoes! You cannot place yourself at the center of decisions all the time!"

"What?! Queensbay is pretty near to USM so they can get here easily and chances are they don't have any plans for the night or they would've told us already."

"Isaac, there's already a plan for us to meet them in the campus at 7pm. Don't just think of your own enjoyment!"

That was only a small chunk in what occured during our lunch. The short version is that we finally decided that going to meet the others was the better choice and we patched up our differences on the way.

What happened within the following few hours would include us buying snacks (and liquor) for the night and catching a bus to Tanjung Bunga. We booked a room in a motel there in advance and we checked in.

The following is where everything interesting begins. We decided to take the bus to Ferringi Beach to check out what's happening in the area but to our dismay we waited for a good half an hour for nothing...too bad. On the bright side, we did take some pretty good photos at the small bus stand. And we met a foreign couple who were in the same predicament.

We had our supper and we didn't realize it's already midnight. Fireworks were blooming in the night sky lighted by the nearby hotels. We chased down the fireworks to take a few good shots and I think it's quite pretty.

We took a walk on the beach where we enjoyed the cool sea breeze at night while taking each other's company. James and Kheng Swee were busy trying not to get their expensive shoes wet to the extent it became a game between the 2 of them. And yea, James screamed like a girl at one point when his shoes did finally get wet.

After which we retired to our room and the Game of truth or dare commenced. The startling part of this entire situation is that James, Kheng Swee and I were sharing the room with 2 girls. Our friends but still a pretty big thing as none of us have ever done anything like it before.

Liquor was thrown into the mix of the game and the results were pretty funny. Somehow no one took a picture of drunk James but there's a picture of almost drunk Kheng Swee. As the picture shows, the situation continued for another few hours until 6am in the morning where all of us were either too drunk to stay awake or just too tired and we tanked.

Morning came and we pretty much packed up and left to our own respective campus. What I feel is that God was very gracious to us that very night. He was there when Kheng Swee and I had a fight. He was there to help us secure the room even though we were 2 hours too late for check in. Most importantly, He was there to keep our minds sober enough to not do things that will potentially harm us.

Praise be unto Him, Emmanuel.

From zac - zaczac_kl@yahoo.com