Penang Trip DAY 1: The Late Arrival

It’s a sunny morning at 10:30p.m. when I patiently wait in A&W for Tommy to arrive, everything seems to be so sunny and exciting inside that it’s hard to wipe off my smile from my face. Soon after, Tommy just shown up and he was as excited as I was! 😊 After some idle chatter and some excitement exchange, we went to the bus station together. The bus is punctual and off we go to our own adventure!

Of course, not everything goes as expected though. Apparently we have underestimated the time required to go to Penang and the the seriousness of the traffic jam on the way to the highway. And even funnier, the bus suddenly took a turn to my home town and I was surprised and puzzled and wondered whether I took the wrong bus XD. Luckily, I didn’t, and actually the bus took a detour to drop some passengers off and continued our journey soon after. The trip does bring back some homesickness, and I’m glad to see that nothing has changed in my hometown. And it’s kinda fun telling Tommy some things about my home town and pointing out buildings along our way.

We reached Penang at about 6:30pm, which is 3 hour late from our schedule XD. And finally we get to check into our hotel (luckily it was really easy to spot), and got out to meet up with Stanley in person. And… I was totally surprised when I saw him! He IS tall and slightly chubby as described in the boards himself. Certainly has blown away my perceived imagination that I had for him when I read his posts (Well, you can’t judge anyone through their style of writing anyway XD).

And our next stop is in Prangin Mall: the place where the linked PPP machine is situated! You can imagine how excited I was, having my virgin try on a linked dance machine! And it was REALLY fun to have a friend to dance! ^-^ Basically there nothing special in the interface or anything (except for a “Link” icon just on top of the credit status, but it’s fun anyway (and really, it’s indescribable!)

After a few games, Stanley brought us to Gurney Plaza to meet up with the PPSURREAL members (one well-known parapara groups in Penang). Woo, finally we got a chance to meet up them! 😄 This time I’m not too surprised when I saw them (since they did posted up pictures in the past)… well, almost, since I didn’t expect some of them being… umm, short XD. But knowing that almost all of them are Japanese (or mixed), guess it wasn’t too surprising :p. And man those guys are really crazy (in a good way XD)! As much being a mild mannered person myself, I do get pretty uncomfortable at times when they joked each other in a slightly offensive manner. But some loosening up does helps to view it in a quite positive manner… on the outset, anyway. (and poor Stanley being picked on most of the times… remind me of a friend of mine during high school. I do hope that the mistreating is really a joke sometimes)

Close to midnight, we are lucky enough to be able to join in their SURREAL training session at Usei’s house (which, according to Stanley, is not allowed to outsiders). And wow! Their training is really professional all right, with all those stretching and warming up exercises (No thanks when I’m doing para at home, I’m just too lazy XD). And their performances are really good! 😄 Not to mention that they did a lot of special performances with accuracy and style!

And yeah! I did perform my solo performance (not in public, since the competition and stuff has been called off), and it’s nice to have some nice feedback! 😊 Of course, it’s not without any mistakes (and I almost lost balance during some routines. Smooth floors and socks are a REALLY bad combo), and I’m really glad to hear some really good advice and corrections to some of my errors by Katsuya (the team leader, and appointed parapara judge by avex, according to SURREAL members 😊). Looks like I do have to look at my para videos closely.

We went back to our rooms at 2am, and manage to rope Stanley in our room (he stays near our hotel, in fact XD) and have some really long and fun conversations. And when he left, I slumped on my bed feeling all tired, yet still feeling excited.