Hi people!

I am currently writing with the closing ceremony of the 16th Commonwealth Games on TV. You just can't help but feel enormously proud of Malaysia for putting up a spectacular effort. And my, what a sporting crowd we've got - very different from those normally passive audience we sometimes see.

In chronicle order, my hectic week was due to the ongoing activities of our SAP system upgrade. Monday - the test system had to be shut down at 5.30pm leaving me joyfully to go ahead with my weekly swimming escapade. Tuesday - worked late (10.30pm). Wednesday - left at 5.30pm to catch "The Mask of Zorro" with Nisah. An enjoyable flick - I totally agree with Shida that Catherine Zeta-Jones is lavishingly beautiful. Nisah, thanks for the evening - I've yet to finish reading your short stories!

Thursday - worked late again (10.30pm). Friday - attended colleague's wedding dinner in Seremban. First time I'm attending a wedding not because of relative's occasion.

Saturday - the day I've been waiting for! From the commuter station in Seremban, I took the ride up to Tasik Selatan with a colleague of mine (and some of her family members) who I met unintentionally at the station. At the LRT station, I was surprised with a huge crowd there.

Worse, the trains that came by were almost full and as one after another train passed by without much opportunity to board it, I was suddenly overcomed by anxiety. Omigosh, I can't imagine being stuck at the LRT station and miss the Games altogether!

Luckily, after 4 LRT trains passed by, the fifth one came in quite empty. The crowd cheered! (This is not even being at the Games yet!). Getting off the station, I bid my colleague goodbye as I rushed to the "Keris", the meeting spot. I'm ten minutes late - 5.10pm. My friend nowhere in sight yet. Good, I thought - I'm still early. It was soon 5.30pm and I started to regret my earlier thought! Suddenly a lady introduced herself and immediately, you knew it was coming.... she introduced herself as a member of Christianity. But I politely told her I'm actually more towards Buddhism but pretty open -minded towards other religions. We did not dwell on the subject of religion that much but had a nice chat on other stuffs. I was already beginning to have my second anxiety when I heard the loud cheering of the stadium's audience after a shot was heard. Did I miss the big thing - 200m finals? My dear friend, where the heck are you - caught in the LRT jam? Sensing my anxiety, the lady lent me her husband's handphone so that I could make a call to my friend. However the line was engaged.

Somewhere around 5.45pm, I heaved a sigh of relief when my friend came in sight. Thanking the friend I made a moment ago, I sped off to Onn Wei feeling just glad that she turned up.

We bought the 50 bucks seats - free seating. The sight of the main stadium was really fantastic. Already, some major final events were going on. On one side, the men's high jump, on another the women's pole vault, on another side the women's long jump, on another the women's javelin. Your eyes have to dart here and there to see what's going on. The two huge digital screens were extremely helpful.

The men's high jump was an enjoyable watch especially when one of our athletes contested - Loo Kum Zee. You've got to be proud of the Malaysian crowd. Once the picture of Malaysian athletes are on the big screen, the applause is tremendous. That's the beauty of attending live events - you really appreciate the feel-good atmosphere there. Every time Loo began to make his jump the claps came in appreciatively and even when he was out, the cheers was there - somehow as if saying "it's alright, you did well".

The women's long jump was pretty hard to see as it was on another end. However, our front sight was actually the long jump start running point. The women bukan main pakai sexy. All the baju ketat punya - sometimes more revealing than the swimsuit.

The women's pole vault was a bit far. I tried to take pictures of "successful" vault jumps and you know what - I wasted 3 films on that! Semua langgar tiang! Cheh! It's better to let the camera there to film the moves - there was a camera which was attached to a long pole alongside the vault area. The camera moves up and down according with the athletes movements.

As for the javelin, most of the contestants were not up to the standard. Only Louise McPaul of Australia dominated the event, edging out the second place winner with a very huge gap. The best thing about the javelin event was that it was real cute to see that a small remote controlled car was used to "fetch" back the javelin to the throwers. I mean, the officials took out the javelin from the ground and put on top of the car so that it will be controlled to move back to the javelin throwing point.

Later in the evening with the other events still going on, the track events took place - 200m men and women, 800m men and women and the 5,000m men. There was also preliminary for the 110m men's hurdles and 400m hurdles. Both Onn Wei and I are not really good sports fan - we don't know the athlete's well but boy we can sure single out the winners for ya! Made easy especially most of the time we chose the black athletes - from Jamaica or Kenya! Onn Wei's guesses mostly kena number 1 spot whereas mine the number 2 spot.

Somewhere in the middle of the events, the screen suddenly showed Mahathir's picture and that really got the audience looking around to see where he is seated. When we saw him, he was already waving back to some other sports audience in the stadium. Also, somewhere in the middle of the events too, some groups started the Mexican wave and it was really fun when the crowd joined in. It was a real joy to watch and also participate in the Mexican wave. I saw it as funny when watching "When Harry Met Sally" movie whereas my friend mentioned that it was also being done at the Michael Jackson concert here. So, hey - been there done that - the Mexican wave at the Commonwealth Games.

The 200m events, you can feel as if the runners are actually "flying". There was also another one of those cameras that moves with the athletes. There was no doubt as to who were the long distance winners in the 5,000m event. All three finalists were from Kenya. It was a joy for me to watch the Kenyans especially after watching one of National Geographic's episode on a Kenyan Olympic runner. People already training in hash conditions like running in the savannah - so it shouldn't be a problem for them at the stadium's nice track.

We also witnessed the medal giving ceremony and stood by a few different country's national anthem. The expressions on the winners face showed the true grit and the sense of feeling proud of representing their country.

I will have to sign off and continue tomorrow. Already feeling drowsy..... tak ada guna punya budak - so fast already mau tidur.....

Regards,
Li Li