Formula 1 Part 1

Formula 1 Malaysian Grand Prix, Part 1

"Honda, The Power of Dreams"
Dream I did, and powerful it was. On 22-23rd May 2008, Honda made my dream come true. From just a simple entry form, consisting of some questions and a slogan, to being the selected winners of Grandstand tickets for 2 to the prestigious Malaysian Grand Prix at the Sepang International Circuit, believe it or not, that alone caught me by surprise. It didn't just end there. Honda made absolutely sure that we had the most spectacular F1 weekend, with 2 x Sapphire 3-days Grandstand tickets worth Rm 1600 each, exclusive Paddocks Pass to tour the pits, 3-day Parking sticker worth Rm 50, exclusive invites to Honda's Street Party at The Curve to meet Rubens Barrichello and Super Aguri Drivers, lunch, dessert, beverages, fans, flags, t-shirts, caps, ear plugs and more all thrown in with excellent hospitality under the good hands of The Honda People.


How could I have asked for more. I'm eternally grateful to Honda, and will also make sure I'll get myself a Honda if I can help it =) For the record, Fluffy researched the questions and I did the slogan. So I guess we have found our winning formula in luck! Lol. Although the tickets were valid for 3 days, we managed only to attend both Qualifying Day and Race Day. But even 2 days are more than enough to fill our memory cards to the brim, with a whopping 1 GB worth of photos. *GRIN*

At the entrance of Formula 1 Village on Qualifying Day. Not many people there, which was fantastic to queue without people "accidently" rubbing against my *ahem* or wiping their sticky sweat on my shirt/skin, or come close enough to leave me no choice but inhale the tormenting aroma of their Body Odour! Wanted to get my hands on some exotic pieces of official team merchandise very badly! The words "Ferrari" and "The Prancing Horse symbol" on a piece of garment costs Rm150 for a spaghetti top to > Rm 300 for a jacket. I was so tempted to swipe my brand new credit card for it, but I didn't want my dad to breathe down my neck. I was wearing red anyway.

The magical entrance for the exclusive.
Never would I have thought that one day I will be able to enter anywhere through the VIP entrance. And it was sweet! Very short queue and efficient officials to give me our entrance band for the day. Ahh~ it was bliss watching other people squeezing through their other entrances, and lining up while being roasted ala Kenny Roger's Chicken under the scorching sun, Muahahahaha... Now I know why people would pay so much just to get a taste of this.

Boy oh boy, that's the starting grid, visible from my seat!
Oh and the podium! (First floor, green patch on the left.)

Also visible from my seat, the magical Turn-1-of-All-Possibilities in the distance, after a high speed potential straight right in front of me! Honda I love you so much.

A very excited me with my F1-clueless Fluffy. It was so funny that he didn't know how the qualifying day was gonna proceed, and when it ended, haha...

The VERY important ear plugs! Being that close to the race track, I was absolutely deafened by the beautiful sound of those V8 engines!! They took my breath away, and my ear drums with it. Well, nearly. I swear, even with those orange rubber stuffed deep inside my ear, the roar of the engines were still beyond bearable levels of loud -.-"

The very exclusive Paddocks Pass that allows only a handful of lucky ordinary citizens to tour the pits, get very very close to the very F1 cars that were being prepared for qualifying at the time, and actually find out what the mechanics actually do in that den.

This is as close as it gets. With a guide, to explain in detail the stuff that goes on around here.
"Any questions?", she asked at the end of the tour.
"How do I get a job here", said Fluffy.
(-.-") , me.

By the way, I think Honda's conservation and environmental efforts are fantastic! With "Save Our Rhinos" and "My Earth Dreams", this is ethical engineering excellence with a heart. Somewhere in the pits, Fluffy spotted Dawn Yang, with red blotches on her face. It's most probably the melted make up that has been blotted away. Lol. Want to know how she looks like in person? Ask him yourself for a non-biased point of view.

Okay, this is Nico Rosberg of Williams F1 team having lunch. Hehehe... *swoons*

While hanging around the F1 village, lookie what I found! I think he's hilarious, and deserves an award for this. Although I don't really know if Ferrari secretly paid him to do it, or he's just a Schizophrenic Hardcore Ferrari Fan.

Well, the Ferrari Flag was waved high and proud as both Ferrari drivers qualified beautifully on the front row! To be blatantly honest, I've seen more Ferrari flags over the weekend than the Malaysian Jalur Gemilang, for the whole of 2007.

The most annoying thing that day was that the cars are so incredibly fast, my shutter speed of 1/8 of a second couldn't quite catch up with it. Strangely, I managed to capture all the other cars better than the Ferraris, leading me to only one plausible conclusion. And that is, Ferraris are sooooo much faster! *squeals* Even before the car reached my screen, I clicked. All I got was an empty piece of car-less road, very frustrating. Lucky for me I attended Qualifying day, spent the whole day capturing empty pieces of road while practicing how to get the cars on my screen instead. You all better appreciate my photos, or face my wrath. *ROAR*

Trying to take a slimming photo of Fluffy. See? This pic shows a jaw line! I'm such a good photographer *Smug*

Did I mention the pit stops were right in front of us. A WHOLE ROW of them all!
In this picture, ING Renault's Nelsinho Piquet and Fernando Alonso, BMWS auber's Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld.

Toyota's Jarno Trulli (4th place) and Timo Glock, Toro Rosso's Sebastien Bourdais and Sebastian Vettel.
I think the pit stops are definitely one of the most exciting features in the race. Split second tyre changes, mechanical magic and the lollypop man working all together in a adrenaline rush to put a car together in just a few seconds! It was exhilarating just watching them, in awe. More pit stop photos in Part 2! Including Lewis Hamilton's and Kimi Raikkonen's...

Honda gave us a wonderful lunch! That's 1/4 roasted chicken over mashed potatoes, salad, brown gravy, garlic bread, and chocolate cake delivered right to our knees XD YUMS!

The "atas" water that XiaXue's always talking about. Apparently this is high class water from a higher ground level in the highlands of France, situated high above the Earth's Equator. Wow, very atas indeed, price also very atas. But no difference in taste okay! I took the lame effort of comparing nutritional values between this "atas water" and a "bawah water", namely our bottle water from underground source. Now that I think of it, our water is really "bawah" -.-" Well, atas water seems to have more minerals and electrolytes than bawah water. But I don't understand what's the big deal about it. Want more minerals in your water? Throw in 2 packets of Oral Rehydration Salt (ORS) into your bawah water and there you go lah! You get a pleasant orange flavour, mildly sweet taste, and a cure for your diarrhoea too! Still very much cheaper than the so called atas water.

To be continued in Part 2....

Formula 1 teaser

Advertisements over. Back to telling stories about my life now. I just had to most exciting weekend and I can't wait to tell.

Bernard and I scored 2 Grandstand tickets, worth Rm 1700 each by the way, to the Formula 1 Malaysian Grand Prix 2008!!!! Yay.... Courtesy of Honda Malaysia "The Power of Dreams". Hey, if Dawn Yang (yup, saw her there in person) can get Red Bull Racing to send her there, so can we. Minus the fake nose.

Qualifying Day
Proof of my presence at the very Sepang International Circuit.

Our great seats with Turn 1 in the distance =) Just a teaser for y'all.

Feast your eyes on Heikki Kovalainen and Lewis Hamilton's Pit. Teeheehee...

FULL entry + coverage on the amazing weekend coming right up, VERY SOON I promise.
With hundreds of photos from qualifying day, over 1GB worth of them, gimme some time to process them ya. Loves.

Political T-Shirt

I bet some of y'all have seen me floating around in campus with this cheeky white T-Shirt that says,

"I'm in an illegal gathering of more than 3 people" in front.
"Without a police permit" at the back.

This white tee has a distinctive attitude, you just can't bear to miss it!
Most of the responses I got were "That's a really cool shirt!". It was heart breaking I tell you, because the shirt is now official cooler than me *sobs* Shall turn you into a table rag, you ungrateful piece of politically twisted cotton! How can a piece of Rm15 T-Shirt be cooler than it's owner... Damn sad lo. I actually paid 15 bucks to be classified as more unworthy than an unbranded shirt.

For those who wants to fit in my shoes, here's your chance! Like the Ling-o-logy saying, if you can't get rid of the misery, SHARE the MISERY!!! Muahahahaha.....




Since the elections are over, no police are gonna have a water game with you for taking political sides. They probably got bored of it. How many people actually likes working in soaking wet underwears? Eww, so disgusting, wet underwears are like the perfect habitat for bacteria and yeast growth! Like Chlamydia, or vaginal candidiasis... Digression over.

Yeah, this time around, the whites are NO LONGER "Limited Edition" pieces. Which is sad for me, because my shirt is not special anymore. Thank you very much, the creator of this thing. Everything you need to know are as follows:

Deadline - April 2008. (So you can get them by the end of April)
Price - Rm 15 for now. Will be confirmed soon.

T-shirt measurements :

Baby-T = 32" 34" and 36″
S = 40″
M = 42″
L = 44″
XL = 46″

To order, Click this , and write your Name, Size, Colour, and Contact Details in the Comments Link. They would like to highlight that payment is strictly by CASH.

If you don't know your size go nick a disposable measuring tape from IKEA and start measuring your boobs/chest. Alternatively for the girls, you can check what's written on the label of your bra. Take the average if they're all different sizes, for whatever weird reason, I don't want to know thank you. By the way, there's also a Facebook group for this shirt, I don't know what for, but I guess it's to promote it. Have a click at it anyway.

Happy ordering.

P/s: I should charge some commission for doing this.

Tech feature on Ling-o-logy

Struck by a lightning, I have been zapped with infinite geek brain cells. With great powers, come great responsibility. And so, I have decided to save the world, by rescuing helpless non-geeks of the world!

Behold... Ling-o-logy shall be transformed, for the greater good, into a Tech Blog!!!
*Chiang chiang Dang Dang*

Kidding lah, hehehe... If you had believed that one bit, then you obviously don't know me enough. Shame on you. Please get to know me better ok. The fact is, I'm actually very hopeless in IT related stuff, and in fact, very dependent on my trusty roomate/housemate/tech support, LiLian Wong! Which I love so much, by the way.

She is a final year Computer and Information Systems undergraduate at my university. Recently, she has come up with a brilliant Tech Blog, all on her own. So smart leh... It provides an interesting read on up and coming technologies, as well as little gadget reviews that never ceases to amaze tech-noobs like me. So nevermind if you're a fellow tech-noob comrade, you'll be surprised that it's NOT one of those geek languaged, boring, makes-you-feel-geeky-just-reading-it kind of blog. In this blog, Lilian also logs her opinions, observations, and originality (The 3 'O's) into a comprehensive blog to benefit the world, while completing her assignment. Yes, it's part of her Developments in Digital Business module and it's graded by her lecturer. Do drop by for a read, support the young, aspiring Tech Support! Oh, and feel free to comment as well, she loves comments =) She even replies personally *squeals*

I hope whoever that is reading this will lend a helping hand, help my dear friend achieve better grades! Like I always say, you'll never know when you need that essential dose of good karma. Besides, its for your own good. Remember to leave comments ya! (It doesn't have to be a techie comment, it can be just layman and encouraging!)

As for my part, and to encourage more your participation in her blog, I shall leave the link of the blog as "Lilian's Tech Feature" in the "In the Blog-O-Sphere" section =) All the best my dear. Muacks!

National Pharmacy Sports Carnival (NPSC)

Enough procrastinating already. This is the last straw. I'm going to blog about it, even with the meager amount of photos that I have. Hands itchy, have not been blogging for over a week! It's been more than a fortnight since the event now, and the photos are somehow, not reaching me. Oh it's somewhere out there alright... it's with A, who passed the CD to B, who lent it to C, who is not done with it, and D who claims to be next in line for the CD...etc. Don't you just get tired of stuff like this sometimes?

The night before, we virtually didn't get any sleep. Camping at Grace's, we made an awful lot of disgusting egg sandwiches. By the way, the sandwiches tasted awesome, they were so popular there were none left by the end of the day. I said it was disgusting because I hate egg sandwiches in general, and I hate it even more after spending a whole night mashing up over a hundred eggs into paste with mayo. Eewwww, egg and mayo is like so gooey and mushy and just plain yucky, to me. I smelt like egg the entire event =( Guess these are times when heavy BO would come in handy.

Posing in front of Grace's TTS home in full pyjamas glory =D
Say Yuen with her yellow bag and pillow, Grace, Me and my pillow and my blanky, Juli with her pillow and her brand new bag.

After helping out with the sandwiches, Say Yuen, Juli and myself stayed up even longer to salvage what was left of our miserable banner. It's supposed to look more attractive than this, I swear. But that cheat of a printing company did such a horrible job. At such a cut-throat price. In such a long period of time. We didn't pay a bomb for them to churn out this piece of shit for a week. The colours are all out, they're not even at the right shade. The only thing we could do at such short notice was to DIY it. You just can't count on other people to do somethings right nowadays.

The Publicity Team behind the-banner-that-was-supposed-to-look-great.
Chin Hong flanked by moi, Say Yuen, Juli and Tennis Racquets. I think. or are those Squash racquets? I can never tell the 2 sport apart. Sports are evils things I tend to stay away from. They make me smelly, sweaty, drain my energy, waste my time and ruin my fattening diet even more. Big no-no, definitely, gotta keep those fats on. Speaking of my diet, I've resorted to having 2 dinners on certain day, I think I've grown a little, but my mum doesn't seem to agree. *sigh*

And then how would an event like this be complete without a formal opening ceremony. Dr.D gave a fantastic unconventional opening speech, it had everyone up in stitches! Since the guests get to sit comfortably in front, we get access to Gold Class seats, hehe, how many of Nottiez have had the honour to conquer the elusive "atas" (literally) seats?

I must say, the view is quite impressive, not to mention the seat were very warm, spacious and comfy!

Merck, Sharp and Dohme (MSD) were our sponsors for the day. In exchange for lunch, we surrendered our body and soul to their Cervical Cancer Presentation. This is better than making a deal with the devil! I mean, you get food, and freebies (folder, pen, 30 Glucosamine capsules, nice paper bag) if we would just sit down and listen to their presentation. Deal or No Deal?
DEAL LAH, OF COURSE!

Chow chow (orange) , one of the few working pharmacists who attended our event. Thank you so much for giving me so much face by coming. Although we couldn't offer much, and I was too busy to give good company, I was glad that he and his mate managed to walk away with a Gold in Men's Double in Badminton. Way to go!

Me flanked by ChowChow (white) and his stellar partner-in- crime victory.

Our Dean, Dr. Doughty, is most charming in this picture. He's a great sport really, participating in badminton and futsal in which they made it to Bronze in the Men's Futsal category. How many Deans these days are as cool as ours? He's ours and my new idol *smirk*

Mr.Wong and Dr.D keeping a hawk's eye on their potential opponents.
They're psycho-ing the rest, like what they always do to us. But you must love them for wearing our Pharmacy T-shirt so sportingly, and looking good in it too.

Duncan, an essential component of our illustrious Men's Basketball team which secured a Gold effortlessly to our delight. As Basketball Scorekeeper, I was only too eager to flip those score cards =) However, I must admit that I now view this fellow in a different light after the competition. It's amazing how you can get to know someone even better just by watching them throw an orange ball around. Although I'm pretty sure we might get to know each other more than we want to when we stay together in UK.
By the way, this dude is single, available and plays good basketball! Not to mention his future pharmacy profession brings in good money in future. Interested? Text me *wink*

The other 1/3 of our champion basketball team, Chong Ngie!
You can count on him to steal the limelight in any basketball game with his swoon-worthy moves, he scores full points in style! The girls were so impressed, we now have a ChongNgie Fan Club going. Moi would be the Vice President, because Juli is the President, haha! Guess what, he's going to be my housemate in UK. Jealous much? *snigger*
Wanted to get a shot with Neil, our star basketball player, but he was too preoccupied with a certain MBB who's out doing what she does best.

The basketball scorekeepers and timekeeper taking a break from the scorching sun. Nothing beats a good shade, a sip of cool water and a camwhoring moment to keep things cheerful. And stop staring at our legs. I know you're looking.

No prizes for guessing which one of the Help Squad member was caught slacking that day. It's not me because I'm too preoccupied with catching a slacking member, red handed, or red shirted rather.

Checking myself in the phone, mirrors are just too far away. Before it was half day, I was told that I was blushing as if I was drunk. Lol. Forgive me for being in such a mess. You would too if you were made to stand under the sun like a piece of salted fish, bathing in sweat and ruffled by the wind.

More meaningless just-to-satisfy-the-camwhore-in-us picture ahead.

While waiting for lunch to be served, we entertain ourselves with the camera.
Top row (L-R) : Duncan, Chin Hong.
Middle row (L-R) : Me, Say Yuen, Juli, Geetha.
Bottom row (L-R) : Jasmine and Cheryl.

The Help Squad too occupied helping themselves to a nice big dose of camwhoring.

When it's over, everyone is so toasted they look like ripe apples =)
CherWei, Me, ChongNgie, SayYuen and Jasmine.

Say Yuen, SiuSien, Juli and myself. The 5 footers.

And that wraps up the post. It's 1 in the morning now, and there's elections going on later today. Everybody, exercise your rights. VOTE! We've heard a lot, and it's high time that we decide.