5th February 2011
On the 3rd day of Lunar New Year, a special event called crash-of-Ipoh-houses was organised whereby houses of CF members who are from Ipoh would be visited.
Chang En, as the organiser, has contacted several CF members a few days earlier via Facebook, asking whether their houses would be open to be crashed. A total of 8 members have offered their houses for visitation, namely Gin, Wendy, Esther, Shiao Wenn, Clara, Jensen, myself and Chuah En himself. Later, Chang En gathered all the addresses of the houses and decided on the sequences. But Gin withdrew from the pack as he thought that visitation would be done in the morning, leaving 7 homes available left.
On the proper day, I decided to join in the crash and headed to the location Chang En asked me to wait for him. My brother sent me there and left after I met up with Chang En. Chang En said there were still some people who haven't arrived yet. We can only start our journey when everyone else has arrived, meaning David, Kharis and Kelvin Wong were nowhere to be seen.
Just then, Jensen appeared with 4 international students, three from Sudan and one from Palestine, that we've met the week before the CNY break. They have decided to join us to learn more about the Chinese culture after we invited them along. Then we decided to wait at the Hillcity hotel lobby for David and Kharis who were on their way from Batu Gajah. But the two of them got stuck, while Kelvin caught in a very heavy traffic jam in Penang. We had no choice but to proceed with our visitation and our first destination: Wendy Lee's house.
Chang En's father drove his son, Clara and me in one car while Jensen and the 4 in another. Using GPRS on his phone, Chang En managed to locate Wendy's house and off we go into her house. The bubbly girl and her mother welcomed their guests and had fellowship with all of them. During our conversation, Jensen began telling stories about Chinese New Year to our international friends while we listened. Wendy's mother gave all of us ang pows as a blessing before we left for our next destination.
As we were getting ready to go to the next house which is Chang En's, Wendy asked her mother's permission to use the family car to ferry Chang En, Clara and myself for the rest of the journey as Chang En's father has returned to his house, preparing to welcome us. This time, David and Kharis finally got out of Batu Gajah and joined us. We arrived at Chang En's residence shortly and we sang Gong Xi Gong Xi Gong Xi Ni Ya (the song was being recorded in Jensen's camera) before stepping into the house.
While in Chang En's house, as we're introducing ourselves, Chang En's mother recognised me as her neighbour in FrontierVille (she was the one who added me as a friend on Facebook). And we had fun chit-chatting while munching on cookies. And Jensen began his story-telling again, this time explainng about the Nian monster and lion dance. Aunty Chuah gave each of us a packet of ang pow before we cabut to the next house in line.
The house we're visiting was Clara's house. And while on the way, Diming called Wendy and said he's joining us. So we waited for his arrival at Church of Praise. Soon he appeared and we're on our way to Clara's house which is situated deep inside Taman Song Choon. That housing area was quite familiar to me as Madam Wong, a friend of my mother's, brought us through that area a few weeks back. We reached Clara's house and discovered she lived in a 3-storey house. The usual things happened: fellowship and Jensen's story time followed by distribution of ang pows and photo-taking session. Then, off we go again and headed to the next house.
According to the sequence decided earlier, it should be Shiao Wenn's house after Clara's, followed by Esther's, mine and lastly Jensen's. But Shiao Wenn couldn't make it while Esther had dinner date with her parents. That means my house is up next (YAY!!). While we're on our way out, we noticed Jensen's car was nowhere to be seen. We waited for a while but still can't see him. Apparently, he headed in the wrong direction. Never mind, it's getting late, we've to move on.
I directed Wendy to my own house and we experienced traffic jam while on the traffic light junctions at Jusco. Fortunately, we managed to spot Jensen's Proton Saga again. We entered the highway to get to my house but the other cars driven by Jensen, Diming and David were not behind Wendy's MyVi. After exiting the highway, Wendy decided to stop at Mobil and tried calling them. And it seemed that all 3 cars have lost their way but Diming was on the right track coming to Jalan Kuala Kangsar. So Wendy directed them to wait at Tesco Extra while she, Chang En, Clara and myself headed into Gunung Lang for a visitation to my house.
My parents and brother were preparing to go out for dinner when we arrived. But they stayed back for a while to entertain the 4 of us. Later my mother left shortly after that as she was supposed to bring dinner to my grandmother who was staying in the house belonged to my uncle whose family was currently having a vacation in Korea. After having a chat with my family, Wendy, Clara, Chang En and myself left my house to reunite with the rest of the troop at Tesco Extra.
We managed to reach Tesco Extra safely despite the traffic jam. And when we were there, Kelvin Wong was already there. He finally managed to overcome the jam after 5 hours and join us. 2 more cars came and it turned out to be Jensen's and Kao Meng's (David was the driver). All of us agreed to have dinner at KFC inside Jusco. The reason was that our international friends were Muslims and they communicated with one another in Arabic. Actually, we have one more house to visit i.e Jensen's, but his parents went out and won't be coming back any time sooner. We had no choice but to skip his house and end our visitation journey earlier, and this means my house was the last stop of the whole CNY house-crash.
We had an enjoyable time having our dinner and chat-chitted with one another. Then, it's time to make a move. Everyone parted their ways and went home. As for myself, I've decided to stay overnight at my uncle's place since it's quite near to Jusco. Jensen was the one who sent me there as Wendy has to send Chang En back to his own home.
Whoa!! It was indeed a memorable day for myself as I enjoyed the whole outing. Thank God for His journey mercy upon all the drivers involved. Of course, I would like to express my gratitude to Wendy Lee for her excellent and steady driving skills along the way. Thanks, Wendy!
These are the 4 people who made it through the CNY house-crash by visiting all the 4 housesduring the whole outing. Coincidentally,they themselves were the hosts. From left: Wendy Lee, Alexson Chuah, Clara Tan and Anthony Chan (yours truly)All the 4 houses share one thing in common: they're all corner lots. Wendy's and mine are at the centre while Alexson's & Clara's at the side of respective rows of houses. All but Wendy's have compound around their houses. Another thing is that in the above picture, we were seated in accordance to the houses we visited, meaning from Wendy's to Alexson's to Clara's to mine. And we have a copy of Google map with us before the outing began. Four addresses were printed on it and the 4 addresses lead to our respective homes. Isn't that wonderful?
And lastly, here's the distribution of those who participated in the whole outing and the percentage of the homes they visited (out of 4):
4 (100%) = Wendy, Clara, Alexson, yours truly
3 (75%) = Jensen and the 4 international friends
2 (50%) = David, Kharis
1 (25%) = Diming
None (0%) = Kelvin Wong
~~~THE END~~~
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