Consolation

□ consolation prize a prize given to a compeititor who fails to win a main prize

My host company puts up portraits of prominent political or historical personalities on the door of our meeting or training rooms.

So I decided to join seeing how attractive the cash prizes were. RM 150 for each winning portrait. And you can choose from any nine. And they will frame it up and hang it on the door.

Alas, the title of the blog says it all.

Damn. Okay, drawing isn't my forte, can? Last I entered a drawing competition was in 1996, sitting at the Kuching Waterfront drawing Fort Margherita.

I do hope I don't come up with a second consolation entry in 3 weeks' time. At least this time my host company is super generous with prizes and providing all the stationery. My upcoming Scrabble competition had me buying my own board. Ridiculous.

Right. Now for some reader participation. Make me happy and guess correctly. At least I would know I had drawn okay.

What say you?

Runaway Bride

"I am going to woo her – I will bring her out to the desert and I will speak to her heart." Hosea 2:14; CJB

The Footstool Players had a play today, called the Runaway Bride featuring 7 plays – The Wedding, McChurch, Pharisee Boot Camp, The Untouchables, Mercy General, Salt and Light, and Love Story.

The bride basically represents us as Christians who have run astray to other lovers. Lovers of apathy, complacency, compromise, consumerism, legalism and idolatry.

Generally, it was a good play, especially McChurch and Pharisee Boot Camp. McChurch carried some satirical connotations, of course, but still quite nicely portrayed.

I didn't get any photos though due to flash photography restrictions and the fact I wasn't sitting at the aisle.

Check them out www.footstoolplayers.com

A Trip To AMREC

It's good to be away from Penang island once in a while. Not exactly one of those too-much-of-a-good-thing scenario, but rather, getting away from work.

What with raking in 119 overtime hours to date over a span of 23 weeks, a bit of a time-out is more than timely, won't you say?

I mean, to quote an infamous quote, that would be:

Please do not expect to work [from] 8 to 5.

That itself, speaks profoundly doesn't it? I shall not digress.

At my host company, industrial trainees have other projects called External Resources where you organize yourselves to join the Toastmasters Club, visit the library and the museum, go for expos, and of course, one of them will be paying a visit to AMREC – Advance Materials Research Centre.

It is situated at Kulim at the Kulim Hi-Tech Industrial Park. I haven't quite noticed the high-techness, but it's probably in all the road signs which says Jalan Hi-Tech 1, Jalan Hi-Tech 5/4.

It is a good experience to pay a visit to such research centres. It's owned by SIRIM, and this is where research are done. They have another centre at Shah Alam.

If you have projects that require their machines or equipment, you can just liaise with them through your lecturers or just write in. A good resource centre I would say, with a lot of equipment for industrial or academic research.

Though, too much science might have caused them to name their meeting rooms as krypton, xenon and iridium. At first I thought they derived it from the periodic table, but not exactly. They had carbonate room too.