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ADV: Lounge @ Royal Oak Review

Reviews 26 Comments

When it comes to pubs & lounges, Kuching still lags a little behind the big cities.

KL has great pubs like Sid’s and Delaney’s. But in Kuching, there’s only a handful of pubs I’d feel comfortable hanging out at without being intimidated by rowdy hooligans.

Hey, I love a good beer as much as the next guy, but if a pub is filled with people who doesn’t not know how to drink responsibly, I’m outta there. But the new Royal Oak at Hills is a little different.

Lounge @ Royal Oak is a new pub/lounge/restaurant taking up prime location at the Hills Shopping Mall, next to Pullman Kuching. They’ve only opened for less than 2 months and already they’ve been getting rave reviews all over the place.

It’s a great place because it’s spacious, not cramped. Service is quick because they have a huge team of staff always running around. 

The owner of the place, Sperry Kong is a big fan of Irish pubs, circular bars and being environmentally-friendly. He made all these elements come together in his creation.

The centrepiece at Royal Oak is the bar made out of recycled bottles. Look closely at the bar top, and you’ll realise that it’s made out of 1 sen coins.

Up the stairs is a loft where the dining area is located.

I came here, famished, on a Friday night at 8pm. It was just before the party crowd flocked the place, so it’s still quite alright.

We asked the waitress for recommendations, and she suggested that we start with a plate of Royal Spring Rolls.

I thought the presentation was cute, but fried spring rolls aren’t my favourite stuff to eat in a pub. Instead, I highly recommend the Royal Grilled Chicken Wings.

You get your hands dirty peeling meat off the bones, but as a pub grub, nothing beats a great plate of piping hot chicken wings, especially when it’s grilled and dripping with hot marinade sauce. Mmm…!

For mains, my dining partner ordered Sirloin Steak. It was a little too well-done for her liking and they skimped on the gravy sauce so she didn’t quite enjoy it as much.

I ordered their Royal Alfredo Pasta for myself and totally loved it!

The prawns were fresh, the pasta was tender and the sauce were done just right. It smelt great when the waitress brought them in, and tasted even better when I put a spoonful in my mouth.

Royal Oak is a Guinness outlet and this St Patrick’s Day Festival, like all good Guinness outlets, they are embracing the Irish spirit down to the core.

There are two food promotions concurrently running.

 

The first promo is a packaged deal. Buy4 half-pints of Guinness Draught together with a platter of finger food, and pay just RM60 nett!

At Royal Oak, they served us lamb meat balls and chicken patties. Don’t be misled though, because these aren’t your usual run-of-the-mill finger food at the pub.

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These are specially crafted finger food infused with the essence of Guinness.

The best thing is, different outlets throughout Malaysia are serving different Guinness-infused finger food from now till end of March, so there’s always an opportunity to try something new.

The other promo is to drink a bucket of Guinness Stout or 3 pints of Guinness Draught, and they’ll throw in a luggage padlock for free.

Not quite sure what relevance padlocks have to Guinness, or St Patrick’s Day.

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Maybe they are suggesting you padlock your partner up and do all sorts of kinky stuff. I DON’T KNOW LAH.

The important thing is this: the annual Guinness St Patrick’s Day Festival is happening again! This time round it’ll be held at 1Utama this Friday 19 March from 6pm onwards. The highlight of the night is the live stand-up by Malaysi
a’s best comedians: Douglas Lim, Kuah Jenhan and others. More information can be found at . 

Too bad this year once again marks the third time in a row that I won’t be in Malaysia for St Patrick’s Day. 🙁

I’m not in Malaysia but in Los Angeles right now. Technically, I should be more excited ‘cos St Patrick’s Day is bigger in the US, right?

Well yes. But not when I have a 42km marathon race to run in a couple of days!

I won’t be drinking. Instead, please Do me a favour and raise a glass to Arthur.

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Happy St Patrick’s Day!

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The ‘Detained-At-Immigration’ Scam

Thoughts & Musings 118 Comments

The most difficult thing I had to do today was to tell a friend she’s been scammed.

Here’s what happened.

Recently a friend of mine got to know this guy from the UK. After chatting to him online for a couple of months, suddenly this guy wanna fly to Kuching to visit her. At the same time, he claimed he’s gonna look for some investment opportunities.

Obviously my friend was excited to be meeting him.

Unfortunately for her, the meeting never materialised.

On the day he was supposed to arrive into Malaysia, the guy was detained by immigration officers at KLIA. His offence? Not declaring those excess amount of cash in his luggage, reportedly to be some £50,000.

It was her friend’s first trip to Malaysia, and poor guy spent it in the police lockup.

 

OR SO SHE WAS TOLD.

Upon his arrival, my friend received calls after calls from him desperately pleading for help. She was frantic. All she could think about was how to help him out. She put herself in his shoes, and immediately felt guilty because she was the reason the guy came to Malaysia.

Three days later, another phone call came. It was from the immigration officer,  telling her that the UK guy would need to hire a lawyer and pay legal fees to the tune of RM7,000.

This was when I smelt something fishy.

And it wasn’t the bad seafood I ate earlier.

The immigration officer instructed her to deposit this legal money into a Public Bank account. My naive little friend complied.

Desperate to set him free, she transferred RM2,000 of her own money to the immigration officer. She figured, he’s gonna pay her back when he got out anyhow.

But I suspected something was amiss.

Already, I was feeling extremely uncomfortable when she told me the story. I didn’t have a good feeling about this, so hopped on my laptop, searched for “detained at immigration malaysia scam.”

Whaddya know? At least 2 people have blogged about similar experiences. Malay Mail even did a story on such scam.

In the end, I had to do the dirty job – I told her that she’s been scammed.

At first, she was calm and collected. She told me that it doesn’t matter – because money lost can be earned back eventually. And karma will eventually find its way.

Then the floodgates opened. And she cried uncontrollably. How could someone do something so evil like that? How is she even going to trust anyone ever again?

Even more hurtful was the knowledge that this online friend that she’s been talking to for months never actually existed. He was nothing more than a phantom, out to take advantage of her charity and selflessness.

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Moral of the story? Never ever give out money to people you’ve never even met.

Twitter Has Hurt Blogging

The Blog Culture 86 Comments

When I started blogging 5 years ago, one of the reasons I did it was because I had shitloads of time on my hand that I needed to kill.

My blog posts back then tend to be short, mundane and written very quickly without much of a forethought. Over time, pressure from my readers creeped into my head. Somehow my style of blogging evolved to long magazine-type articles with 50 different photos and ends with a punch line.

Soon enough, my readers accepted that long entries and punchlines are  essentially ingredients of what makes kennysia.com, kennysia.com.

It becomes a situation that when people log on to kennysia.com, they wanna read long entries, they wanna read something funny. And if my entries aren’t long enough or don’t end with anything funny, I’m gonna find myself a mailbox full of people calling me fat.

 

A lot of people don’t realise it, but brainstorming for jokes and photoshopping pictures ain’t exactly easy. Doing stuff like these for my blog tend to take up a lot of time. At one point, I was spending TEN hours divided over 3 days just to craft up a single blog entry.

Imagine that. TEN hours just to write ONE single blog post.

It wasn’t a problem for back me then because, like I said, I had shitloads of time. The problem is, these days I cannot even find time to shit. Let alone blog.

Yes, back then I was happy to spend 10 hours crafting up a single blog entry just to make my readers happy.

If I had something short or mundane to say, I would rather not blog about it at all – simply because it does not pass the Kenny Sia Quality Assurance Test™.

The longer I blog, the more I realise kennysia.com is no longer a hobby of mine that I do after work. My website had evolved into an “online lifestyle magazine” of sorts. I had to be careful not to offend people. I had to make sure people enjoy reading my content. I had to do all sorts of quality control to make sure the stuff published on my blog is good enough for an “online lifestyle magazine”.

The difference however, is this.

Whilst established magazines out there have a team of writers and photographers and editors working around the clock. Me? I got nobody. I gotta do it all by myself.

Eventually blogging became more of a chore. I wasn’t enjoying it as much.

Then Twitter came along.

 

And Twitter is awesome. I can publish one-liners and photos anytime, anywhere, on my phone. I could be sitting on the toilet bowl, or having my lunch, (or both) and I could still update on my Twitter.

Unlike traditional blogging, I don’t have to take photos with my digital camera, think of an idea, then wait until I get in front of my computer to update my blog. I can just do it all on my phone.

It works well with my lifestyle too. Since about 3 years ago, I have been pretty much living off my suitcase and travelling all over the world. Most of the time, I update my Twitter through my phone when it isn’t convenient for me to update on my computer at all.

The problem now is this.

I seem to be managing two completely different online sites – kennysia.com for long carefully-thought out blog entries written on my computer. And twitter.com/kennysia for my short spontaneous thoughts published through my phone.

But I think it is about time that I marry the two.

In future entries, I’ll be transforming kennysia.com into something similar to Twitter.

Updates will be short, simple, not always funny – but quick and frequent.

What it means is that kennysia.com is always gonna remain fresh. I’ll be updating my blog mainly through my phone, but if I do get the time to sit down in front of my laptop, I’ll write my usual long well thought-out entries.

Reason I’m this way is because about to embark on a 3-week long trip to the USA and Australia. I foresee myself not touching my laptop for quite a bit. Twitter will be my best friend, but there will be times when I need to say stuff that cannot be contained in 140 characters or less. So mobile blogging is the way to go.

I think this may very be the direction that blogging is going into.

Only time will tell how well this is gonna work.

My LASIK Surgery

Re-discovering Myself 104 Comments

14 December 2009 was the last day I’ve worn my glasses.

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It was the day I’m finally going to receive my laser eye surgery, and be free from the constraints of contact lens and prescription glasses forever.

I happened to be in KL for another engagement, so I requested Optimax to pen me down for my laser eye surgery at their headquarters at Wisma AHP, T.T.D.I.

My surgeon was Dr Stephen Chung. Dr Chung is one of the pioneering laser eye surgeon not just at Optimax, but in the whole of Malaysia. When opting for a procedure to be performed on something as vital as my pair of eyes, obviously I wanted the best of the best.

With Dr Chung, I knew I was in good hands.

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I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous.

The truth is – I was a complete nervous wreck!

*scared*

I was so scared I didn’t even sleep a wink the night before. All night long I was tossing and turning in my bed while a million thoughts went through my head.

What if something went wrong? What if I couldn’t hold still during the surgery? What if the doctor made a blunder? What if I go blind and never get to see again?

WHAT IF, WHAT IF, WHAT IF.

The morning of the surgery, JacJac was nice enough to take time off her extremely busy schedule (doing absolutely nothing) to accompany me to Optimax.

I wouldn’t be able to see properly afterwards – just so I don’t have to spend the night sleeping on the streets of TTDI, I thought it’s a good idea to bribe a friend to become my personal driver + tongkat for the day.

That’s me wearing a sweater to Optimax.

One thing I was afraid the MOST is if I suddenly sneezed while the laser surgery is still in progress.

Later I end up with laser burn marks all over my face, how?

Anyway, the nurses at Optimax are experts at calming people down. Obviously, they dealt with patients a lot more nervous than I was.

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No, they did not tie me up in a straight-jacket. But they did try their best to tell me in advance what to expect, and how to take care of my eyes later on.

I was given this gift pack which includes detailed instructions of do’s and don’ts, as well as a collection of anti-biotics, painkillers and heaps of eye drops for post-surgery care.

The centre also booked me in for a series of eye check-ups 1 day, 1 week, 1 month and 6 months after the surgery, all free of charge.

(I mean, it’s gotta be free of charge after you paid so much money for surgery, right?)

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After some last minute eye check-ups, I was led to the waiting room.

This was when they put me inside this blue-coloured protective suit.

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And a white-coloured cap over my head.

I think essentially, they tried to convert me into a smurf.

I handed my glasses to JacJac after that. It was the last time I ever had to put them on.

Dr Chung came out to meet me shortly afterwards. He was also dressed in his smurf outfit.

From this point onwards I was not allowed to take photos, so I’ll try my best to use words to describe what happened.

Dr Chung led me onto a machine and did a final round of checks on my eyes. After that, he dropped some anaesthetics to numb my eyes. Then it’s time to enter the operating theatre.

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I was asked to lie down on the operating bed that looks like this.

I was still very nervous. My eyes were open and I was conscious at all times. To make sure that I do not blink, Dr Chung taped my eyelids open then use a “cup” to secure my eyeball. It was weird seeing a foreign object coming down to my eyeball. It was an uncomfortable yet bearable sensation. I could somewhat feel the cup gripping into my eyeball but I couldn’t feel much pain because my eyes were numb.

Moments later, Dr Chung pl
aced a LASIK machine over my head. This time, I was told to focus on a ring of white light and that I should not move my eyeballs under any circumstances.

I did as I was told.

When the ring of white light appeared over my eye, I suddenly felt a sensation of vacuum suction in my eye. I could hear Dr Chung talking and buzzing noises in the background. Gradually, the ring of white light comes closer and closer towards my eyeball, until all I can see was total darkness. For 30 seconds, I could see absolutely nothing while the LASIK machine did its wonders. At times, my eyeballs flinched slightly, but it wasn’t that bad.

He did my other eye. Before I knew it, it was all over. As Dr Chung lifted the machine away from my head, all I could see was blurry images of the surroundings. Dr Chung said the first step was a success, and I was led to an adjacent operating theatre nearby.

The first step was to create a flap in my eye. The second step was to re-shape the cornea. The procedure was similar to the first one – extremely fast and virtually painless.

Dr Chung said I might smell something burning at this point of the surgery. I guess I was too relaxed to smell anything.

I was so relaxed that if someone passed gas in the operating theatre, I still wouldn’t be able to smell it.

20 minutes after I entered the surgery, it was all done.

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As I slowly made my way out to the waiting room, I saw a blurred vision of JacJac in the corner. I asked for my sunglasses because the lights were glaring.

I also heard the nervous voice of a patient talking to me.

Patient: HOW WAS IT?! PAINFUL OR NOT!!!
Kenny: Not really. On the scale of 1 to 10, probably only 1.
Patient: REALLY AH?
Kenny: Yeah. I’ve sat through dentists a lot more painful than that.

The truth of the matter is, I was all smiles. It was done! I don’t have to wear my glasses or contact lens ever again!

My vision at this point after the surgery was blurry. It’s like wearing a fogged up glasses when you exited from an air-conditioned car into the hot weather. I could still see, but only the vague shape of things.

JacJac dropped me back to my place, and I had the longest sleep ever.

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When I finally woke up after 6 hours, I instinctively reached for my glasses. That’s when I realised… NO, I DO NOT NEED MY GLASSES. Because I could see my room so clearly without the need for glasses!

I was ecstatic. Alone in my bed, I screamed for joy like a little boy. I was excited because finally, after 15 long years of wearing glasses – Dr Stephen Chung cured my eyes!

The moment I opened my eyes and saw the surroundings of my room so clearly was definitely one of the most magical, miracle experiences in my life.

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It has been 2 months since my LASIK surgery at Optimax. My vision is now officially 20/20.

Aside from the usual dryness during the first couple of weeks, I was doing great. The periodic check-up at the Optimax branch in Kuching reassured me that I was recovering fine.

I’m enjoying my new lease of life.

Life is so much easier without glasses or contact lenses. Nowadays I can wake up without the ritual of putting on contacts in the morning; don’t have to carry along a bottle of solution all the time; can do sports without glasses and swim without worrying about the water washing away my contacts.

I had absolutely no regrets. Going for LASIK was definitely one of the best decisions I have ever made in my entire life.

And it’s all thanks to this man.

 

Thank you Papa Smurf.

How I Inspired A TV Commercial

Life Documentary 65 Comments

Not many people can claimed that they inspired a TV Commercial.

But by some bizarre twist of fate, I did.

Friend of mine Alwyn is a film director who recently secured a deal to produce the TV commercial for Dahfa Fish Snack. The director was very much tickled by the fact that I’m a big guy, yet I compete in 42km marathon races around the country regularly. Based on that, he conceptualised the TV commercial and invited me to play the lead role in it.

Next thing I know, I’m on a TV commercial for the second time round.

All I had to do was munch on a packet of Dahfa fish snack while running.

Perhaps, being round and jolly is a good thing after all.

Happy Chinese New Valentine’s Day

Life Documentary 66 Comments

Happy Chinese New Year, and Happy Valentine’s Day.

I’m gonna celebrate this double-whammy special a little different this year by disappearing for a few days to do my own things and plan for the year ahead. Before I leave, here’s a little goldie from my Twitter a few days ago when I asked a question, and @euveng replied.

“If Chinese New Year + Hari Raya = ‘Gong Xi Raya’, then what do we say on Chinese New Year + Valentine’s Day?”

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Gong Xi Fuck Cai.

Zhng My Eyes

Life Documentary 74 Comments

I had been wearing glasses for about 15 years.

I suffered from a myopia of –6.00 on both eyes. It all started back when I was in Primary 5. Even though I had awesome vision back then, I thought wearing glasses was damn cool.

Because a couple of my classmates wore glasses, I actually felt left out due to the fact that they had four eyes, and I only had two. What the heck, right?

It’s because of this jealousy I had that I did something very stupid thing. For days afterwards, against my mom’s advice, I deliberately did all I could to destroy my perfect vision.

Sat in front of the TV as close as possible.

Read books while laying on bed in a dark room.

Wear my dad’s funny glasses that make me look like Harry Potter.

Eventually, my vision deteriorated to the point that my mom had no choice but to send me to the optometrist.

I had to start glasses. My mom was disappointed. I was overjoyed. Until puberty hits and I began taking interest in girls.

It was then that I realise wearing glasses does not make me look cool. Glasses make me look like a nerd. Unless your last name is “Gates” or “Jobs”, no girls would be impressed going out with a nerd.

So I started wearing contact lenses. But even that brought about its own set of problems.

The problems with wearing contact lens is the same with wearing bras: I can’t swim with them on, I kept having to remember bringing them along for travel, and I gotta buy a new pair every few months.

This is what I did when I forgot to pack my contact lens case on my trip to Bali.

I used bottle caps.

Anyway, now that I am running around a fitness centre, I find it even more inconvenient to wear either contacts or glasses. I hated wearing glasses so much that it motivated me enough to seek that One Solution To End All Problems.

Laser Eye Surgery.

To be honest, I’ve been thinking about doing laser eye surgery for a long time. The only reasons I hadn’t gone ahead earlier were the same as everyone else.

1) I thought it might be expensive.
2) I thought it’s dangerous.
3) I thought if the doctor isn’t careful, I might end up with eyes like The Terminator.

With the advancement of technology, all these are of course, exaggerated concerns.

These days, it’s possible to get laser eye surgery done in many parts of Malaysia, including Kuching. One of the country’s best-known eye specialist centre, Optimax, has a branch here and it is located near the Simpang Tiga flyover.

This is where I had my pre-surgery consultation done.

Optimax contacted me to fill the role as their ambassador. I gladly agreed after ensuring their reputation is solid.

They have experts doing the check-up and consultation in Kuching. Their doctors fly in here from KL on a scheduled basis to perform the actual surgery.

In KL, some patients even had their eye examination and treatment done on the same day. In a way its save up more time and patients do not have to lay off lenses for so long.

This is my lovely consultant, Ding. According to Ding (“AccorDing?”), there are different types of laser eye surgery.

The cheapest and most common one is LASIK surgery, which cost around RM1,500 per eye. Next step up is EpiLASIK, which does not use sharp blades to cut open the cornea. The most advanced form of is Custom All-Laser LASIK, which cost around RM3,000 to RM3,500 per eye, but utilizes the safest and most precise equipment ever brought into Malaysia.

Before I went for my eye check-up, Ding told me not to wear contact lenses for 3 weeks. So for 3 weeks, I was the nerdiest-looking gym owner in the history of Kuching.

She went ahead and did some weird eye tests on me: flashing alphabets on the wall and asking me to speak “ABC” as if I was back in kindergarten.

Next, she asked me to put my head into this bizarre-looking machine.

That machine looks like it’s gonna hypnotize me and make me do the Jai Ho dance. Naked.

Funny thing is, I complied.

Kinda disappointed that all it does is showing scan my eyeball.

Ding proceeded to perform more tests on my eyes.

 

“Gimme all your cash. NOW!”

“Here, let me take a look at the cleanliness your eye… OH MY GOD!”

At one point, she dripped some anaesthetic into my eyes, which felt funny. Then she dripped something to dilate my pupil.

My eyeball dilated so big until it became like this.

Kidding.

But the effect did last for so long that I wasn’t able to read small printed words till the next day. The good news was that my eyes were all good for laser eye surgery. I was about to get a new pair of eyes!

My laser eye surgery was scheduled to be on the following week. As you perhaps may have noticed, the surgery was a success and Kenny Sia lived to tell the tale.

I’m gonna talk about my experience inside the operating theatre on my next blog entry. Suffice to say, it wasn’t really THAT bad.

All I ended up was looking like this.

X_X

A Case Of Mistaken Identity

Out of the Ordinary 126 Comments

A couple of days ago, I accidentally dropped my 10-month-old Apple iPhone.

It resulted in a White Screen of Death and a trip to Maxis service centre where my iPhone was diagnosed with Permanent Head Damage, and I was charged with first degree murder.

The iPhone is now in the ICU. I’m not sure how fast Maxis works, but I probably won’t get it back until a few months later.

The iPhone to me was the king of phones. It is capable of doing so many things that other phones are not able to. I find myself so dependent on it that I don’t even know how I’m gonna function without an iPhone.

 

I was half-tempted to find an excuse to get myself the latest Apple iPhone 3GS. But I know I’m gonna get my original phone back eventually and it wouldn’t make sense to hang around with two Apples.

As the saying goes, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Too many apples suck your wallet dry.

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I figured it may be healthier to have some variety in my fruits.

There’s a lot of hype over the Blackberry and a lot of my friends have been egging me to go towards The Black Side. Even until now, I never understood what’s so god damn fantastic about the Blackberry – the iPhone can pretty much do everything a Blackberry can do. I don’t think I’ll ever switch to using the Blackberry.

But ladies and gentlemen, this is called “peer pressure”.

 

It’s too difficult to explain why I did it, but I got myself the Blackberry Bold 2. The biggest advantage Blackberry phones have over others is something called the “Blackberry Messenger”, or BBM. To put it simply, it’s like Windows Live Messenger on mobile.

If you have a Blackberry and you have another friend on Blackberry ANYWHERE in the world, you can give him your “Blackberry PIN” and send messages to each other free of charge.

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I’ve got about 20 of my friends on Blackberry Messenger. Then one day, a total stranger by the nickname of “Rock Star” suddenly added me on BBM.

I had no idea who she was, but I accepted her request anyhow and we started having a conversation.

Kenny: Yo, who’s this?
Rock Star: Hi, is this Reuben?
Kenny: No, it’s Kenny here.
Rock Star: Really? What is your last name?
Kenny: Sia.
Rock Star: You mean I’ve got the wrong person?
Kenny: Yes I think so. I’m in Malaysia.
Rock Star: Oh sorry. I’ll delete you straight away.
Kenny: It’s okay. 🙂

And that was that.

If this were a fairy tale, “Rock Star” and I would continue chatting, we would fall in love, she would fly all the way to Kuching to meet up. Then we would kiss, marry and have three beautiful little kids together.

Unfortunately, reality is not as kind.

 

 

This is how she looks like.

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FML.

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