An announcement - and my JB Trip

As I write my experience here to you about my lone trip to Johor Bahru, I have an announcement to make, in favour of the Christians. I have converted to Christianity myself after understanding the religion for about four years. I must thank Kah Soon for his giving the Bible to me after I told him in Form 4 that I am looking for a Bible to study.

Yet, do not think that just because now that I am a Christian, I am a new me. Believe me when I say that I am still the same Yew Guo Zheng before and after I accepted Christ into my life. I do not wish to write about my experiences here on my journey towards Christianity, for it is very long (four years!), but if you wish to hear my testimony, you can come and see me personally.

So let us focus on what I want to write initially. On the 26th of December 2006, I took a bus ride from Ipoh (Medan Gopeng) to Johor Bahru (Larkin) and arrived safely a few minutes before 9.30 p.m. I expected the bus to arrive earliest at that time so the bus was indeed very punctual. (Based on my knowledge of physics, I had calculated that the bus was travelling at a speed of 90 km/h most of the time. Hehe...)

I was warmly welcomed by Josiah Tay and his father at the bus station. Upon my meeting Josiah, I laughed. Why? Well, he had had a new haircut and the barber gave him a crew cut; no, not so short. Previously, his hair was longer than mine, now mine is! Gone is the long and stylish fringe, and gone are the sideburns, too! Still, that does not deter him from doing his hair, did it, Joe?

I found, to my delight, that Joe's new house isn't very far from Larkin bus station. His family has moved in just recently (and soon I'll be moving out into a new house, too) and I was warmly received by Joe's mother; such a hospitable family they were, indeed! His parents wasted no time telling me about Johor Bahru and all the food that I should try. At about 11.30 p.m. I washed myself up and had a rest for the night (of course, that would mean DotA with Joe and hanging around with him and his church friends in his room).

The next day, while Joe and the rest were still fast asleep (they slept very late at night, no doubt), Joe's mother brought me out for a late breakfast (really, it was actually brunch) and had "kueh teow kia" (pardon my poor command of Teochew/Hokkien; I am shameful to admit I'm Teochew). After breakfast, we returned home and still found them fast asleep. So, we just had a chat together until it was time for lunch, when we decided to wake them up. Sure enough, they did, albeit reluctantly (haha...).

Anyway, it was raining and lunch wasn't ready yet so we had a game of Risk, which I lost badly. Never mind about that. We had lunch and then we decided to go out to Danga Bay, although there was a bit of a drizzle. At Danga Bay, I was amazed to see that there was a boxing competition going on there. We watched it for a while (for one whole competition actually) before we walked around Danga Bay and saw the restaurants, the beaches, the bazaar and many more. We even walked into a compound where they had built the Malay houses that supposedly represent different cities or towns in Johor, for example, they have Rumah Johor Bahru, Rumah Segamat, Rumah Batu Pahat, Rumah Kluang and so on. Though they were all Malay houses, each of them has a unique architecture that our eyes will not miss.

After having a good look at the houses, we made our way to Danga Mall, which is not very big, and not crowded at all. There isn't anything very interesting in there so we decided to leave Danga Bay after walking along the street mall (not to be confused with Danga Mall).

We were then taken for a drive around the housing estates of Johor Bahru (we wanted to go and fetch Joe's brother, Joel). Even the housing estates here are huge! An average housing estate has 20000 to 30000 houses! The biggest housing area that I know of in Ipoh is the Bercham area, but I am not sure if it has that many houses. The houses in Johor Bahru are simply magnificent. Perhaps there are also lots of houses belonging to Singaporeans because to have a land of your own in Singapore is something like virtual reality. And these houses are no ordinary bungalows or semi-detached houses, oh no! They are some of the most lavishly designed houses you have ever seen, so much that you couldn't help my gape at them.

At night, Joe's father decided to take us for a night ride around Johor Bahru city centre, where I got to see for myself how beautifully lit the city is at night, especially Danga Bay! We passed by a building where Joe's father claimed that he saw Freemasons and that the building belong to them. Of course, nobody knows what they do; they are sworn to secrecy. We continued our ride around town, saw City Square for myself, got as close to the Causeway as I could (the jam was horrible!), went along the busy Jalan Wong Ah Fook, and so on before we went for supper in Perling, the area where Joe and his family used to live in.

On the 28th of December, we got up quite late also (with the exception of Joe's parents, of course) and straightaway got up for lunch. Joe and I had actually planned to watch Eragon but there was some inconvenience, so we had to postpone the intention. Therefore, we spent most the day at home playing DotA; some of the kids that stayed over in Joe's house even played with him on my computer (poor you, Joe. You had to put up with them with five easy Computer players). In the evening, Joe's father returned home with a bucket of friend chicken from KFC and other side dishes, and a birthday cake. "Joel's birthday?" I thought. No, it wasn't. It was actually their housemaid's birthday, and the family have been kind enough to actually have a celebration for her. She was so touched that she actually broke down and took quite some time to compose herself.

The chicken meal was good and the cake was simply the best! After the hearty meal (which I'm not so sure if Joe would agree; no doubt he will I suppose), Joe, Joel, their father and I went to Tebrau City (Jusco) which is supposedly the biggest and is the newest shopping mall in Johor Bahru. I had wanted to shop for a pair of jeans (so did Joe and Joel) and their father wanted to purchase a 3-in-1 machine (scanner, printer and photocopier [or facsimile?]). We were taken to Jeans Studio first (owned by Jusco) and I had the leisure of picking a pair of jeans myself. I found two which suit me, but decided that I would go with the black, semi-carrot pair because though the blue one was cheaper, it looked dull. It wasn't long before the three of us (Joe, Joel and I) got our jeans (I think Joel got something else, too) and then we went to see if we could get some nice round-neck t-shirts, too. Unfortunately, none of the shirts were appealing to us. So, Joe and I got out and had a walk around the mall while Joel and his father went to look for the 3-in-1 machine. At last, they got one and we decided to go home. Let me remind you that none of the nights, even the final one, went without a game of DotA.

29th of December came. Today, Joel had tuition class for Additional Mathematics so we decided to drop him off first at about 2.30 p.m. before going to City Square. In City Square, it was so crowded that I didn't really get to enjoy myself shopping. Still, I managed to get myself two shirts, all round-necks, from Factory Outlet Store (FOS) which was located just above Padini Authentics Concept Store. Then we continued to walk around, indulged ourselves in McDonald's ice-cream and walked passed a perfume stall before we saw a familiar face. Who could it be? It was none other than Ng Kee Siong, another of Joe's and my university mate, who was working! We expected him to be in UTP already because he is involved in the International Oil and Gas Symposium in UTP. However, he was not due to be in UTP until after New Year's Day. We had a chat with him for about ten minutes, in which he asked me if I'd enjoyed myself in Johor Bahru, and in which I replied him in the affirmative. Soon after that, we left him to carry on with his work and made our way to see more clothes, in which we were soon uninterested. So we made our way to MPH Bookstores. There, Joe got himself a CD (I forgot what he bought for only RM9.90) and so did I (a Bach collection, as you would have expected, for RM29.90). At about 5.00 p.m. we left City Square to fetch Joel.

We then went to Leisure Mall for Eragon. We couldn't help commenting on how cute the dragon was when she was still little (eats rats? I didn't know that dragons eat rats), but not-so-cute anymore the moment she grew up. It was a nice movie depicting on how a young man, by the name of Eragon found a dragon egg which he thought was a stone. It hatched and the dragon soon saw her dragon rider, in which she made a mark on Eragon's palm. It was a story about the good versus the evil. No more spoilers here, I think, except that we believe it will be a trilogy like The Lord of the Rings. After the movie, we stopped by at a VCD or DVD outlet stall where Joe couldn't help buying an anime for himself.

30th of December now. It was my final day of my Johor Bahru trip. Today, we started off with our lunch of Johor laksa, for how would you consider yourself to have travelled in Johor Bahru if you do not try its Johor laksa? Although the family would have liked me to try the Otak-otak Muar and nasi lemak, they couldn't due to constant raining and time constraints, too. The Johor laksa is nothing like our ordinary laksa, which is normally Penang laksa or Ipoh laksa. Unlike our ordinary laksa, Johor laksa tastes like curry, and you choose what type of noodles you would like to eat instead of giving you the usual type of noodles (semi-translucent) which they would normally use in Penang laksa. This really took me by surprise. Well, you can't expect everything to be the same, right? There are many types of food which we have eaten, but different states would give them different names. Had the Johor laksa been available in Ipoh, it would be known as curry.

My last station of visit for the day is the Vineyard Church, in which Joe's parents work. Joe's father is the pastor of the church and there was a Graduation and Prize Giving ceremony for the kid's division. I was happy to go and rather eager to see how the church looks like. In the church, I made myself rather at home and watched Joe enjoying himself on the drum set. The graduation and prize giving ceremony was a joyful event, and as the photographer was late, I had to replace him as the "new" photographer. Thankfully I had my camera with me, and although the battery was weak, thank God I could take all the pictures that they wanted. (Note: Joe, I wrote this blog entry upon my arrival in UTP in the morning. I'll send you the pictures tonight itself.)

After the event, the worship practice took place in which I enjoyed myself in their practising of the worship songs. And I was equally happy to find that they played two of my favourite songs, Amazing Grace and O Holy Night. After the practice, Joe asked me to come up stage to play, in which I initially declined the offer because I thought that it was a keyboard (a 55-key keyboard is definitely insufficient for me). But upon hearing that they have an 88-key electric piano, I jumped to the offer. Played a classical piece halfway by Ravel and then I decided to attempt to play O Holy Night and Amazing Grace myself. I didn't have the scores so I just played from what I had listened earlier. Being a semi-perfect pitched person (I said semi-perfect because though I can figure out some keys and chords myself, I can still have a hard time telling apart one key from another), it gave me the advantage to figure out the notes and the chords (with a bit of help from Joe) and it wasn't long before I tried to improvise the two songs (which I wasn't so successful for Amazing Grace).

It was about 7.30 p.m. already so we made our way back home for dinner. We had nasi lemak (Indonesian style I guess because the maid cooked it and it was nothing like our local nasi lemak; her sambal was deadly hot!) and after dinner I began packing up. After that (I told you that none of the nights went without a game of DotA, right?), it was DotA time again until about 9.30 p.m. when it was time for me to leave for the bus station again. The whole family came to send me off. The bus was scheduled to leave at 10.00 p.m. but it wasn't until 10.30 p.m. that the bus finally arrived the station. We bid each other goodbye and soon I left the station.

I arrived in Ipoh on New Year's Eve (31st of December) at about 6.15 a.m. where I then settled myself down for some light breakfast before taking a taxi back to UTP (part of my secret trip plan) and arrived at about 7.30 a.m. Deciding that the morning was too early, that was why I decided to write out this blog entry first, also lest I forget some important events in my Johor Bahru trip.

So what have I learnt from this trip? Besides spending a wonderful holiday there where I got to meet some university mates and got to see around Johor Bahru, this trip has strengthened me spiritually. My converting to Christianity is something that both Joe's parents have experienced before personally, and they told me about how I am to deal with certain difficult situations that every convert would most probably face. They were happy to know that I have become one of them, yet I know that there could be hard times ahead of me. Still, being a determined me, I shall not sway so easily.

My trip in Johor Bahru has indeed been very memorable. I feel so indebted to Joe and his family for their hospitality, kindness and attention to me. They had been indeed very attentive to me and I feel very honoured. It makes me so difficult to return the favour but nonetheless it is a trip that I am happy to have made.

So, where to next, you ask? It will be Pulau Redang! I'm comin', Ivan and Chen!

P/S: Joe, this entry would show you very clearly that I am safe and sound at home now. Please convey my thanks to your family again.

P/S 2: Much as I like to include some pictures here, I didn't really take any. As such, no pictures included. So sorry.

P/S 3: Joe, I think I left my novel in your house under the table in the living room downstairs. It's Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. If you find it, could you please bring it back to me upon your coming back to UTP? Thanks :) .