Dinner and a Movie

[Thursday August 30th]
Tonight is the Eve of a long weekend. Here in Malaysia it's the Malaysian Independence Day Weekend (Merdeka). Most everyone is heading out of town to go visit their families. The traffic, even worse than a normal Friday night. Sounds like a great night to stay close to home and catch a movie. So I did!

Mei Fong and I decided we'd go see a 9 o'closkish movie. We fought through about 45minutes of traffic to get back to my apartment so I could drop off my Laptop. Seriously, the traffic is much more intense than normal. The Coastal Highway was gridlock. A total Jam. Finally I approached my exit and everyone was taking that exit just to try and merge back in a couple of hundred meters down the road! The highway is 3 lanes but there were easily 5 lanes of cars on it! All vying for position, driving down the sides.

Eventually we made it back, MF made it back before me (local driver...). I dropped of the laptop and we headed to Queensbay Mall. Just outside the mall we spotted some colleagues from work and I shouted out the window at them. I gave them a startle ;) We went to go get tickets for Ratatouille but all but the first row were taken. So we passed on that but decided to see Fracture. We went to go get dinner and the afore mentioned colleagues SMSed us to see if we wanted to get dinner. All four of us had dinner at a Dim Sum place. It was pretty good, I had pork over crunchy noodle. It was so-so, definitely different. Had a bunch of other stuff like wontons, scallops, cold white coffee.

After dinner we walked through a small exhibition of Thai crafts and food just outside the Mall. Some interesting stuff there. The others had to split so MF and I walked around the mall with about 1.5 hours to burn before the movie.

We ended up stopping at Toys R Us and I bought a new game. It Very similar to game game I already own 'Don't go to Jail' but its adds some new pieces and new rules. Its a dice game based on Monopoly where you roll the dice to try and gets sets. You can earn houses for extra points. Be careful of rolling 3x Go To Jails or you'll lose everything! Its a fun one. We played on a bench at the mall. Every stopped and looked at us, hilarious!

Well eventually the movie time was upon us, after dropping all the game pieces down the hall at the mall... We went to the movie. We of course had to get the obligatory Carmel corn and Coke (mmm, Carmel Corn and Coke...).

The movie was great. I really enjoyed it. I must confess though that I now have this strange desire to build a marble rolleroaster... The movie stars Anthony Hopkins. He Plays the Smart, Educated, and Calculated Antagonist. It keeps you guessing what is coming up next, what twist will unfold, how will this turn out. I give it a solid recommendation!

After the Movie, ~11:50pm, there was a large crowd of people gathering around the Mall. We decided to wait and see it there were going to be any fireworks at midnight, we had heard rumors. In the mean time we strolled around the carnival that is just adjacent to the Mall. What a odd place that was, old rides that seem a bit sketchy, group carnival games that are more simular to gambling than traditional US Carney games. The ferris wheel was driven by a massive chain. The chain looped around the entire wheel and was driven at the base. Huge car springs were used as chain tensioner. The noise of the chain rasping through the motor mechanism was loud and disturbing. Suffice to say, we didn't ride it ;)

We did get to see some fireworks in the distance at Butterworth (The other side of the bridge) but none at the Mall itself. We decided to leave, unfortunately so did everyone else! It took us an hour just to leave the parking lot! I didn't get back to the apartment until after 1am! Thankfully I have Friday off!
-Terry