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We attended our first Japanese class this morning at Ringo Language Centre. What fun! For our first lesson, we learnt the different pronounciations of the Japanese language, ie. the basic a, e, i, o and u coupled with consonants. We also found out that we have been pronouncing sushi (and probably all other Japanese words!) wrong all this while. Yes…it’s pronounced se-shi, not suu-shi. Oops. Though I doubt anyone would understand us if we were to go to Genki Sushi and said, “I want this seshi and that seshi”….=)

After class, we went off to Midvalley cause I needed a white tube top to wear under my sheer kebaya top for the dinner tonight. No way was I going to parade about with my bra showing…I mean, if I had assets to show, then maybe I’d consider it…but since I didn’t…a tube top would be good coverage…=) Managed to get 3 butterfly hairclips from Evita Peroni as well…gold and pink to match my kerongsang (brooch) and the color of my kebaya.

A quick check on the rabbits (Moshi is much better, thank god!), and then it was time to get changed. We left home about 6.45pm…luckily there wasn’t any traffic jam in the city center, so we managed to reach Mandarin Oriental at about 7.15pm.

With ‘Colors of the World’ being the theme, we saw many Chinese ladies wearing saris, Malay ladies wearing cheongsams, a couple of ‘Japanese’ ladies, a couple of ‘Korean’ ones, and one Red Indian! Most of the men came in long sleeve shirts and coats (guys just have it so easy!), but we spotted a few wearing Samurai costumes, and one wearing a kilt (he refused to reveal whether there was any further clothing beneath the kilt..)…=) Nevertheless, majority of the people present still wore the traditional evening gowns…I guess it’s just too much trouble to find something new to wear when you already have something nice hanging in the wardrobe! Our Country Business Manager, Piyush Gupta, was very sporting though…he turned up in an Egyptian costume (though at first glance, we all thought he was dressing up as an Arab Sheik)!

The food was so-so as usual. We’ve been to Mandarin Oriental about 6 times, all Chinese dinners, and not once was the food better than average! This year’s emcee was pretty good though…he organized a game that was played throughout the dinner whereby the hall was divided into two groups: the Ku Wak Chais (gangsters) and the Sat Sei Lei (kill you all) group (names chosen by the nominated group captains!). There were altogether 4-5 games which consisted of getting the group to yell and clap, guess the song titles, etc. and the group that won each game would win points. The games culminated with each group forming a huge circle around the hall and doing the Chicken Dance (yes…imagine a few hundred well dressed people flapping their arms about)…! Unfortunately, the group that we were in, Sat Sei Lei, lost the final game which carried 20,000 points, which put the Ku Wak Chais in the winner’s spot. As TI aptly put it, instead of Sat Sei Lei, we Sat Ze Kei (translation: instead of killing them off, we killed ourselves instead!). The group leader won himself some vouchers, while the rest of the participants won…free soft drinks for 15 minutes. *snicker*

There were performances by Arthur Kam, drummer extraordinaire, together with his elder sister Genervie who played the electric violin. I had so much fun watching Arthur play the drums…the beat was absolutely infectious and you could see that he was having fun up on stage as well. Their performance was followed by 5 songs from none other than our first Malaysian Idol, Jaclyn Victor. Unfortunately, the crowd was too busy eating and socializing, so alot of her comments and teasing went unanswered. However, her final song for the night, Gemilang, caught the crowd’s attention and everyone was clapping by the time she ended her performance. Yours truly managed to get a photo with her…=) Up close, you could see that she was a little bit tired (or was it frustration with our Citibankers ‘dead’ attitude?), but she was very accomodating…smiling, laughing and posing for the cameras.

The night ended with myself, KC and TI posing for silly photographs taken by my very patient hubby…(more photos will be uploaded soon)…=) Oh, and we had quite some luck in the lucky draw too…hubby, KC, CY and AO won some vouchers!

Hubby and I left before they finished announcing the 5 grand prizes for the lucky draw as we wanted to beat the crowd and the jam out of the basement parking area. On the way back, I started feeling abit peckish, so we made a detour to Haagan Daz @ Bangsar Shopping Center. Feeling all silly, I walked past the night crowd at Coffee Bean in my formal kebaya to get two scoops of icecream: Mango Sorbet and Strawberry. What wouldn’t one do for food! Yum!

Back home, hubby decided to play photographer and started taking photos of me with our Canon D-SLR. I think we spent almost one hour fiddling with the different settings and lighting. He did manage to get some good shots and some closeup of my kebaya embroidery and kerongsang (brooches). By the time we finished, I was half dead with exhaustion. After a quick bath, it was off to bed…I think I must’ve fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow!