A trip to Kuching

On Awal Muharram, I had to make a trip to Kuching for a meeting with our Client. Over the past six months we have had meetings in Kota Kinabalu, Tioman, Langkawi, Genting, Melaka. It has been a tiring affair. As this was supposed to be our final meeting, a few of us decided to bring our wives along.

My wife was worried to leave our kids (actually some of them are no longer kids) on their own. The whole family was at the LCCT terminal to send us off. One of my kids remarked, "macam nak pergi haji pulak".




The flight was on scheduled and smooth and we arrived at about 11:30am. Our Client had made all the arrangements to pick us at the airport and everything was like clockwork. After checking in we went for lunch at a nearby food court.




The participants started to arrive as the day went on. After dinner, we had a "pre-council meeting" to prepare for tomorrow's deliberations. If past meetings were to be used as yard sticks, the pre-councils would take us past midnight. This time was no different but I left around 12:30.

On Friday, the meeting went on as planned. In fact, it was so smooth, that what was supposed to be a 2-day meeting was completed in one day. The MOU was finally signed at the end of the meeting. That night we had dinner at Thai restaurant. The food was nothing to shout about. The highlight of the dinner was each company had to send a representative to sing at the karaoke machine.

Saturday was a free day. The bosses chose to play golf while the rest of us had a day off. Our Client arranged for us to go to the border town of Serinda. This town in Malaysian territory but the customs and Immigration checkpoints are not at the border but about 2 kilometers inside. So, the Indonesians can practically walked into Malaysia unhindered and sell their stuff. The locals only collect rentals of the stalls. Quite a bit of things are on sale but the most prominent include textiles, curtains, mats, crystal (of all things).

There was another dinner that night. This time it was hosted by the Director of the State Dept. Another round of karaoke. I went to bed straight after dinner as I was quite tired and my right foot was aching after the long walk during the day. I woke up at 1:30 just in time to see man Utd trashed Newcastle 6-0.

On Sunday, we had another round of shopping at the "Waterfront" and Pasar Satok. Good local stuff at reasonable prices. At noon, we checked out and went straight to the airport. We had to pay more than RM1,500 in excess baggage but this include some of our equipment which we brought along for the meeting.

All in all a good trip. Air Asia did well for us. No delays.