Warning : This post contains 37 photos, which is EXTREMELY dial-up not friendly.

A good friend of mine, Jose Lee whom has migrated to Manhattan, U.S. with his family 5 years ago came back to Malaysia for a short holiday. I have once blogged about him in this post, so I shall cut straight to the day we met and things we did. I accompanied him for 20 hours (From Saturday 12PM until Sunday 8AM.) that day, including shopping, meeting friends and having meals.

My girl friends – Pei San and Suet Lei fetched him down to Malacca on New Year Eve. Since I was in Malacca, we agreed to meet each other in Mahkota Parade. For those who don’t know, Mahkota Parade is the only and one prominent shopping complex in Malacca. Pathetic, I know. –sighs-

After 5 long years, we finally met again. He has gained weight significantly and bigger size, which made him look like The Rock. The body is bigger than the head itself. Ha! Before he left for U.S., he couldn’t converse in English. Now, his English has the American’s ascent and is now better than mine.

He didn’t have enough shirts to wear and wanted us to accompany him to do a little shopping. We went into the Giordano shop and picked a stripe shirt for him. It fitted and he decided to wear it on the spot. (He hadn’t change since the night before.) Therefore, the sales girl asked him to take it off so that she could iron them. When the sales girl passed the shirt back to him, Jose handed out a RM10.

Jose : “This is for you.” –handing out the RM10-
Sales girl : “Har?!”
Jason : “Oi… What you doing?”

Jose : “Service charge mah!”
Jason : o.0″
Sales girl : “No. We cannot receive any money from our customer. It is part of our service.”

Jose : “Are you sure?”
Sales girl : “Yes. Thank you.”

Jose : “So nice. In U.S., service charge of USD10 just to iron the shirt.” –keeping the RM10-

We went to a few more shops to get him some decent clothings.

“I feel so rich now. I can shop like nobody business.” said Jose.

If you don’t understand, remember the exchange rate is USD1 = RM3.80?

Then we went to Starbucks for some coffee and chitchat. 5 years is a long time, there are so many things to talk. After spending 1 hour sipping slurping our coffee, we went to Kenny Rogers Roaster Chicken for our second round of lunch and chitchat. With the girls around, there was no quiet moment at all.

Right after we came out from Kenny Rogers, Jose saw the Sushi King restaurant and he said he wanted to eat sushi. There’s no sushi in U.S.? –ponders- Since my “machine” is 24 hours / 7 days on standby, I had no problem with that but the girls were making a little bit of noise. However, they went in also and ate for the third round. -rolls eyes-

After spending almost 5 hours in Mahkota, we drove back Tampin because Jose had a reunion with his ex-classmates at 8PM. Again, yours truly was invited. Thus, in 2 seperate cars, we rushed back to Tampin. Because I had to go back to my house to collect my stuff, I took the other route which is longer yet I was faster than them by almost 20 minutes.

We arrived at the restaurant and 5 Science 2 classmates were there already. Therefore, the reunion started with photo taking, with my camera. The whole restaurant was filled with our laughters, especially one crazy girl’s voice. -sweat- Let’s not go into details, she’s really loud.

Everything was good except the food. Futhermore, I’m picky about food nowadays. -grins- There were claypot “taufu”, “sambal” prawns, sweet and sour pork, lemonade chicken, steamed fish Hong Kong style and 2 types of veges. The bill came up to RM120+ inclusive of drinks and white rice.

It was almost 12 midnight when we parted ways. Jose wanted to look for another old friend - Sze Min. Sze Min was our senior in school and Scout. For your information, Jose, Ven Soon and me were scouts. I got to know him through scouting first. In fact, he was my team leader during my first Scout camp.

“I always remember the first time I got to know Jason. He woke up on the first night asking me for food.” said Jose.

-sweat-

Before I forget, Ven Soon is one of my good friends since Form 1. Jose, Ven Soon and me had a lot of fun during Form 4 and Form 5 when we would cycle home from school together, steal some coconuts from a plantation, got chased by an old lady for stealing her coconuts and etc. It was one of my happiest moment throught secondary school life.

We talked for almost 3 hours there before Ven Soon needed to take the 5AM train to go back K.L. He’s one bugger who can’t stay home for more than 24 hours. He came back to Tampin at 8PM, Saturday to meet up with Jose but went back to K.L. at 5AM, Sunday. That is less than 12 hours! Although Ven Soon and me are good friends, but we haven’t seen each other since Chinese New Year. -lol-

After sending Ven Soon, Jose’s plan to visit everyone in Tampin has come to an end. I brought him to my house for a short nap so that he won’t be so tired later as he needed to go Johor Bahru with his family to visit their relatives at 8AM, by bus.

Before I dropped off Jose at one of his relative house to meet up with his parents, Jose gave me a souvenir. A USD10 note.

Thanks a lot, Jose. It may be only USD10, but the meaning behind this is greater than USD10. I will keep it until the next time you visit Malaysia.

Make sure you keep your promise, that you will come back to Malaysia and visit us within 5 years time from now, OK? Take good care of yourself over there and we all love you, no matter what.

Cheers!

P/S :

This is a back dated post.

That’s one heck of a long entry. I wanted to spilt into 2 parts, but I suppose most of you won’t be too interested with it. That explains the 37 photos in 1 post. However, I have removed as much text as possible and let the pictures do their work.

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