2009 Wraps up (Dengan apologi buat makantido)

2009 passed by..

Personal Life

I just started my married life with Siti Maryam... a totally new experience.. had to learn to share my spacious bed with a stranger...

Tok Wan passed away in the summer months of the northern hemisphere (since malaysia has summer and daylight saving throughout the year).

Career

I passed the pressure piping examination and got my second API certification in January

I was consumed with Corrosion Under Insulation study and deadlines the first half of 2009, that nothing else seemed important.

Being assigned with doing SRBI was one of the best experience I have had with Shell.

Being focal point for material and corrosion was also an enjoyable experience.

Set up several corrosion awareness training for the whole refinery, which was attended by almost all junior staff.

I became active in quality audit again...

And I seemed to quiet in the eyes of the bosses, hence...

Still have not passed the steam boiler engineer Gr II certification.

Regardless, I am happy with I am doing

And this year's great plan will be passing API571 & API580 plus the steam engineer plus getting my IR. Big year 2010.

Airasia

I started becoming a regular airasia passenger. If only they had something like 'frequent flyer' programme, I may have collected enough points to go around the world.

I started accepting the fact that airasia and flight delays are inseparable terms. Frequent flyer like me can still feel good if the delay is more than 2 hours, as we'd be entitled to RM200 voucher, which I'd use for the next purchase. Random europeans popping up in Asia: sorry that the voucher got wasted. You should have sold them on e-bay.

What pissed me off most was when the delay was 1 hr and 50 mins. damn damn.

I later learned that MAS had also embarked on cheap ticket, so yeay, I switched to MAS from time to time.

Sports

Last year, I just did normal running now and then, and played football when there was opportunity. Sadly, being a weekend husband did not allow me to do much sports since I worked till maghrib to keep the weekends free.

Newcastle surprisingly got relegated, but are on the way of coming back.

Travels

Highlight for 2009 was travelling, as I spent 6 weeks abroad.

4 in Australia (work related) where I celebrated hari raya plus going around victoria & great ocean road.

Special thanks to Ihsan who managed to mengepau me when he was in Geelong, and brought along some baklava with him.

At least we spotted some Koalas, and understood why this animal are going to extinct. It is survival of the fittest, and they don't seem fit at all

2 weeks in Turkey backpacking. Great experience. Went to cappadocia to see how nature eroded the stone (like in great ocean road), and how people ran into the caves to keep their faith. Well honestly I don't if that was christian as in the trinity faith or unity faith, but we should not ruled the unitarian out, since they were there before the time of Prophet Muhammad s.a.w.

Politics

2009 was full of by-elections, including one in my constituency, Bagan Pinang. PR won most of them, but saw the backlash, in Bagan Pinang. Almost got interviewed by TV9 hot reporter with tudung, when she interviewed early voters that day. Regardless, it was a good experience, i mean the voting and the election, and not the reporter.

PR also had their conference, and PKR had established themselves to be sort of the saviour of the people (even though their candidates crossed over etc). PAS on the other hand lost significant trust from the public, especially due to the unity government issue, and further attack on TG Nik Aziz. Sad.

Others

Got the news that my sister's husband's wife and his brother-in-law's wife (biras) are pregnant. So, we'd be expecting 2 babies in the family in 2010.

2009 ended with the court ruling allowing the Herald Tribune, and christian communal newspaper to use the word Allah in their publication. Hmm, personally, I do not see the problem since the Christian's God and Muslims God and Jewish God is the same Allah. That's why sembelihan ahli kitab adalah halal.

However, I do not want to comment much, since another group will be calling me apostate etc.