Thanks and happy new year!

Hi everyone,

First of all, thanks for all the birthday wishes from everyone. I've never received so many happy birthday emails and wishes before but I think Facebook plays an important role nowadays. :-)

Second, happy Chinese New Year! Wishing you all a very happy, prosperous and good health year ahead!
Errr....I'm not sure what the Chinese words mean. I really have to learn how to read one of these days!

Chinese New Year was a nice and refreshing break even though getting home for CNY was a long trip. My colleagues decided to hold a meeting in the Philippines on CNY eve's eve so I only got home at 11pm the night before I had to catch a bus at 8.30am next morning back to KL. Argh!

I've flown a lot last year but still felt nervous about missing my flight because that would have meant missing reunion dinner on CNY eve which is a big thing to me. Thankfully I made it home, got about 4 hrs sleep as I did my spring cleaning, packed and headed out to the bus terminal.

For this trip to KL, I decided to try one of them luxury bus (http://www.airebus.net/) this time rather than fly since (a) it's cheaper, (b) it's a luxury bus, (c) it's really close to my hotel in KL. The experience? Really nothing much to shout about. For a SGD70 ticket, I kinda expected more. Yes, we had personal TV screens for our seats and reclining chairs but that was about it. The food I got was a two dollar meal I can buy around where I live and I got a cup of hot Milo for a drink. The funny thing was the Indian bus steward had a very poor command of English that it was so hard to understand him but he spoke fluent Japanese with one of the Japanese passengers.

Anyway, my conclusion about the luxury bus? I may still fly next time especially since the discount airlines have been allowed to fly the highly protected KL-Singapore route. Only two airlines were allowed in the past - Malaysian Airlines and Singapore Airlines and I guess business is business as the route became the most expensive route per km in the whole of Asia. I have heard good things about another bus company call Aeroline though.

What I did in KL is easy to describe - eat, gamble, sleep! Nuff said! :-) Good to be back with family and better still, I now get World of Warcraft lessons/tips from my uncle whom I introduced the game to back about a year ago.

Okie dokies guys - time to get back to work!

chet