Christmas Tree Contest 2009 @ Sibu Town Square (Part 2)

This is the continuity of the Part 1 about 2009 Christmas tree decoration contest held in Sibu.

Standing at the middle of the 12 Christmas trees for this competition is the one owned by the organizer, the Sibu Municipal Council. This one is exactly the same as the one last year, it is not for competition.

Now, lets look at the remaining Christmas trees.

Sugarbun Christmas Tree. It gave me the feel of a not properly rendered 3D tree in computer graphic. Anyway, the presentation is quite unique and the shinny green and red wrappers did catch my eyes.

Tanahmas Hotel Christmas Tree. With the green cloth as the base of the tree, it was decorated with red clothes, red ribbons and some trinkets. Almost the entire tree was covered with decoration objects which shows the effort by the participant.

A reindeer can be seen just beside the tree caring Christmas gifts. It'll be more complete if a Santa Clause can be placed on the sleigh.

Kingwood Hotel Christmas Tree. No fancy decoration for this tree, but the entire tree was covered with Terendak hat of different size, the traditional handcraft/hat by Melanau community in Sarawak. This is the participation with the strongest "Sarawak taste".

Farley Christmas Tree. With the Santa hat on top of the tree and a giant Halloween snowman stands beside the tree, it gave me a more fairy tale feel. I guess children will like this one.

Sing Kwong Chritsmas Tree. Different from other participants, 2/3 of the tree was shaped using bendable LED tubes. It doesn't look too special at day time, but once the sky is dark and the power of electricity is supplied to it, I am sure the view will be spectacular.

Daesim Group Christmas Tree. Well, in my personal opinion this is the most impressive artwork among the 12 participants. A fairy tale Christmas which is the dream of most kids!

With the theme "Bobby in Xmas Land", this team had putting extra efforts in the design. A Santa house was guarded by toy soldiers and in front of the house, there was a mailbox addressed No.1 North Pole. In the mailbox, a letter was received and it was addressed to Santa.

Papa Santa was actually in the house! But somehow, maybe he wished to sneak out from the house and going to give away Christmas gifts to the kids without being noticed, he was found on the roof, half of his body still inside the chimney.

There was a signboard at the house compound specify the particular space is only for sleigh parking but somehow this cute sign was missing 2nd day I revisit to this place again! Well, maybe someone tried to make an illegal parking here? Is a norm is Sibu I guess but I am not sure if this also happened in No.1 North Pole!

Santa house at North Pole is a very peaceful place to stay, even birdy would like to make its nest at the windows. It is really cute.

Here they are! The 12 Christmas trees for this year's competition presented to you. The result is unknown yet, but the Daesim one in my personal favorite! How about you?

Christmas Tree Contest 2009 @ Sibu Town Square (Part 1)

Christmas Tree Contest is an annual event organized by Sibu Municipal Council in conjunction with the coming Christmas celebration. This is the 3rd year in a row the council organized such event. The venue of the event remain the same, Sibu Town Square next to Wisma Sanyan.

The were 12 participants taking part for this contest this year. They can roughly being divided into 3 groups, local private companies, hotels and local shopping complexes.

The marking standard is unknown, but according to previous year, creativity and waste recycling usage were take into consideration.

Here are 6 out of 12 of the participated Christmas trees. Another 6 will be revealed in the coming post.

KTS Group's Christmas Tree. It is simple, typical look but I would say it is elegant.

Subur Tiasa Holdings Berhad Chritsmas Tree. It is extra simple. Basically it is just a con shape frame covered with white clothes then decorated with another greyish cloth and few trinkets.

Delta Land Berhad Chritsmas Tree. This is a "1 Malaysia" tree. Why said so? Did you see the number 1 on top of the "tree"? Then did you notice the colorful Christmas tree basically is using the colors found in Jalur Gemilang (national flag)?

Not a bad idea though since the term "1 Malaysia" was widely used in various fields. We have 1 Malaysia Trusted Fund, 1 Malaysia stamp, 1 Malaysia toilet (did we?), 1 Malaysia F1 Team and the most recent I heard, 1 Malaysia clinic. So, in Sibu, we have a 1 Malaysia Christmas tree which is the one and the only in the country perhaps.

But what are those discs mean? 1 Malaysia is surrounded by pirated discs? Oppss...!! Just kidding! ^ ^ It is the usage of waste I guess which should be encouraged.

Pansar Group Chritsmas Tree. The concept is just similar with KTS tree just now. Simple and typical yet elegant. The tree was decorated with red ribbons and trinkets. The base was covered with well-wrapped xmas gifts where the wrappers are poster of manufacturers who the company dealing with.

The main objective for this participation maybe is not for prize winning, but is a method Pansar and its business partners wish everyone have a merry Christmas! （I guess only...)

Ta Ann Holdings Berhad Chritsmas Tree. The white-cloth Christmas tree was surrounded by a golden stripe. At the base of the tree was a house (or church) with its roof covered with "snow". I think the corporate tried to mimic the "white Christmas" ambience. The Santa Clause was parachuting from the sky (how he get back to his reindeer after that?).

Zoo Bee Garden Bongsai Center Chritsmas Tree. Regular participant to this event. A neat piece of work with the base was covered with white and shinny stones. Beside the Christmas tree there were 3 snowmen created with waste material I guess?

There you are! The 6 Christmas trees took part in this annual event. In the coming post, another 6 will be shared and please stay tune!

Playing With Rubik's Cube

Magic cube was once my toy when I was still a kiddie. I can still remember at that time, solving and arranging 1 out of 6 faces was just like rocket science to me, not even dare to think about solving the entire cube.

Recently the trend of playing this magic cube was alive again! From a 5 years old kid to an adult like me, magic cube had become a toy on leisure. With Internet technology, solving the cube is no longer hard and it is something that everyone can do!

I started to play the cube from the influence of a 14 years old kid. At first I was hesitate as the "rocket science perception" still worried me. However, after some persuasion and encouragement from him, I decided to give myself a try! After all it is not just a toy. It is a brain game!

I then bought myself a cube from a local toy shop. There are many types of magic cube sold on the market, each one vary from price and quality. I got the one with fluorescence edge which cost RM14.90. I thought this kind of cube can be played in a dark ambience, but it actually cannot as the color of each face are not fluorescence!

The 14 years old kid became my mentor for the cubing game. Yeah... learning from younger is not something you should shame about! Besides that, I also look for some info about this game on the Internet. From there I just realized that the official name for the cube is called the Rubik's cube, not magic cube. This is 3x3x3 Rubik's cube, the standard one for competition.

It is not that hard to solve the Rubik's cube actually, there are plenty of resources on the Net that teach you the way. But I would suggest that visualized tutorials are much effective than the written one. You can just go to Youtube and search for "Rubik's cube solution" and you will get overloaded tutorials about it. Just pick any you feel comfortable and I am sure you can do it as well!

So far, I can only solve the cube in around 3 minutes (more or less depend on the luck). The most recent world record holder is Erik Akkersdijk from Netherland who solved the cube in 7.08 minutes seconds!! Just can't imagine how he did it, but here is the video for your eyes opening and it was absolutely amazing!

Well, I never think of break the record as I believe I can never do it with my degraded brain, but I hope I can achieve the target of under 2 minutes one day (but dunno when as I am worry maybe this is just another "3-minute-heat" for me).

The Lousy Polis Saman SMS System!

Received a letter from Traffic Division Bukit Aman today with the receiver is my brother. The letter is about an unpaid traffic summon reminder which was quite shocking as I didn't hear my brother mentioned about any summon before. So I called to notify him which himself was caught in surprise as well.

There was an instruction in the letter saying we can actually use SMS service to check for summon. I knew about this service but never try on it before. So I asked my brother to use the service to get the summon information. From what I read from the letter, I told him how was the SMS syntax should look like.

After he tried, there was no summon recorded on his name. As both of our name is just an alphabet difference, I started to suspect if they wrongly type the name on the letter. To play safe, I tried the SMS service to see if the summon was under by name. I followed the syntax "Polis Saman (IC Number / Car Plate number)" then sent to 32728.

However, I think it was a wrong syntax so the system returned a message to me and charge me RM0.50 for this (as shown in the picture below). In this message, an example of the syntax was given. It was actually far more easy!! Just "POLIS SAMAN" follow by car plate number you wish to check. It was definitely not as complicated as mentioned in the letter!

 

I sent again and this time the reply shocked me! It said that my car was having a summon cost RM100 and due on 11/12/09 which is today!!! Without much thinking, I rushed to police HQ tried to clear the summon.

After the police traffic on duty checked on his system, he told me there was no record of summon under my name! WTF???!! I told him the situation and he offered to check the record for my brother. After checking, it was confirmed that there was an overdue summon belongs to my brother!

Can you see the lousiness of the Polis Saman SMS system here? It just provided the wrong information yet charge RM0.50 for each SMS! In another word, we pay for the wrong information! I am not sure how frequent this happened but what is sure is that some enhancement or improvement should be taken immediately to the system.

Polis Saman SMS system is a widely use system in the country, thus lousy service like this should be avoided so that the public can use it with confident and sense of reliable. Wrong information will just bring more trouble for the general users who forced to pay for the service! This is definitely unreasonable!

A Farewell @ Cafe Cafe Sibu

This was just another farewell lunch for my company. A farewell lunch for us usually will mean 3 things. 1st, we gonna lose another comrade who share the same poor old boat with us in the middle of an ocean yet still trying hard to struggle for life. Secondly, the departure of any of us means he/she had successfully swim to the shore and the brighter days are awaiting in front, so we sincerely wish him/her all the best in future undertaking. Thirdly, we got a free lunch paid by company within a fixed budget which is among the very few consolation we get for serving the company.

The farewell lunch this afternoon was not an exceptional. We still share the same 3 meanings. What was different with the previous farewell lunch was the leaving comrade is more "special". Perhaps I shouldn't call him a comrade as he always live in his own world, with his own thought and never want to share the boat with us.

He is hoping we are happy for his leaving but for us actually this leaving won't make much difference in our life despite more mess to be cleaned. Well, his contribution to the company is definitely undoubted but I am sure if he could have better communication skills, he will definitely excel further in his career.

Anyway, no matter what's the argument or misunderstanding we have previously, this leaving marked a fullstop on all these. His departure means a better future is awaiting for him and I sincerely wish him all the best!

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Not forget to share some of the dishes we ordered this afternoon. We had these at Cafe Cafe Sibu which I reviewed about it before.

Creamy Pasta with Turkey Ham which is shell pasta cooked in homemade cream sauce, capsicum and fresh herbs. RM15.00 per set.

 

Spaghetti Marinara served in olive oil, creamy seafood white sauce, herbs and paprika at RM13.00 per set.

 

Kapitan Chicken Set which is steamed rice served with sauced chicken, marinated vegetables and snacks cost RM9.50.

 

Beef Masak Hitam served with steamed rice, buns and marinated vege (RM14.00).

This is the set I ordered called Nyonya Fried Rice. Quite a nice dish you can try. The rice was fried with dried shrimp and fresh prawns. It has strong dried shrimp taste, so if you are fan of this, then this set lunch maybe will become your favorite.

 

 

The set came with baked chicken in padan leaf but I personally felt that the chicken is tasteless although the presentation was awful. It also came with snacks and marinated vege. It costs RM13.50 per set, quite worth if compare to other dishes.

 

For dessert, we shared some cheese cakes. This small piece of cheese cake costs RM7.50 but it was creamy and delicious!