soaring above all of you...
Back in from Penang
Penang was great, fun, exciting, exhilarating, inspiring.. well, to cut it short it was a hell of an experience. by hell, i mean great! i've learned so much in so little time, what i've learned isn't confined to knowledge and the technicalities that tecniplast has instilled unto us, but its inclusive of the life's lessons and the advices of the more experienced.. hmm *points at gianpaolo, paul, efisio* lol anyway, what i've seen during that week has caused my outlook in life to change, i used to think that a masters degress locally would suffice, but hearing from where everyone else graduated, i've just been inspired to try and scout for a postgrad scholarship in europe when i graduate. my head literally turned close to 90-degrees, i even made a wallpaper about the trip.. its at the end of my post lol.
anyways, aside from the training, i had some fun in penang, i shopped quite a bit; i was always out of the hotel and at at the night market. i got the the belt my brother wanted to buy, the souvenir shot glasses for john, some bookmarks for my friends cause i really couldn't decide on what to get, keychains for my mom's secretaries, a ring for myself and that encompasses everything i was able to buy at the night market. if you come from southeast asia, there's nothing really to buy from the night markets within other southeast asian countries because everyone virtually sells the same things. moving on, i was able to buy some good clothes, a locally made shirt that was around 20 USD, it was a good deal cause i really liked it. shorts around 15 USD not bad considering it was original american eagle, and also 3 giordano shirts(one for me, one for mom, and one for my brother) totalling to about 54 USD, really great bargain! it was on sale for crying out loud, otherwise it would have been 70+ USD.
aside from the spending spree, i really liked the street foods, particularly the most popular ones called cha keow teow (in fukien it is tsa kui tiao) the fresh fruit juices were also a blast. too bad we weren't able to eat the penang laksa, which my mom's friend said was one of the best local foods. anyways, leisure wise, penang isn't that attractive because the sand at the beach is coarse and of large particles, the sea water is murky, and jellyfish abound the sea. bad despite that, i still went jet skiing, parasailing, and took a banana boat ride. the best part of them all was the time we all fell from the banana boat, the ride proved to be a survival test.
the whole thing lasted for 6 days, from monday april 16 to friday april 20. and we set back home to the philippines on the morning of april 21st. well we stopped by the duty-free store at penang airport and the prices of the things around me were so tempting that i just had to grab a watch. so i did, it was a guess watch roughly around 115-120 USD. great, it had style and makes bold statements!
thanks to my new found friends: from Hong Kong, Long Hsu, Tracy Ong, Christine Wong; from Thailand, Warunee Totiam, Vipawa Srijam; from Malaysia, Helen Ong; from Singapore, Shirin Pang, Joyce Chang, Stephanne; from China, Xiao Yang, Hong Bo, hmm.. sorry forgot some; from Korea, Gi-Hoon Nam, Jully Kim, Noh Seungjin, Han Sejin; from Japan, Sachihiko Okubo, Takashi Ishitsuka, Takeshi Hayashi; from Tecniplast, Gianpaolo Milite, Efisio Spanu, Paolo Tamborini, Paul Lee.
click the pic for a bigger image.
