Semmy & Imelda’s Wedding in Jakarta

My third time visiting Jakarta, Indonesia. And I must say, I enjoyed myself here more this round! πŸ™‚

17th April 2010: Touch Down

Even though there were 6 wedding invitation cards sent to Malaysian marketers, only Elle and I answered… and yep, we were the only ones from Malaysia showing up for Semmy‘s wedding. πŸ™‚

Danny Baskara and Agung were there at the airport to pick us up and we settled in their office apartment, Apartmen Semanggi (Central Jakarta). Elle insisted on taking over Danny’s room since it’s more comfortable, so I wind up with Agung’s room… which meant sleeping on the floor LOL

To spend the first night in Jakarta, we ate at Jimbaran and also met up with other Indonesian Internet Marketers like Dee Ferdinand, Padro and Ferry.



Late into the night, we watched the movie “The Book of Eli” at the Grand Indonesia cinema.



The show is set in the a post-apocalyptic future. A massive war took place 30 years ago that rendered the entire world into ruins, and everyone was back to the stone age. Natural resources are depleted and water becomes a premium.

The hero, Eli (Denzel Washington) travels to west and carries a book, The King James’ version of The Bible, and protects it with his life. Very thought-provoking show, you must watch if you haven’t!

18th April 2010: Grand Indonesia

Hung around in Grand Indonesia in the day time, since the wedding function was only at night. πŸ™‚



While we were at Grand Indonesia, I did my last-minute shopping – got myself a Polo Explorer cologne and a tie to go with. Basically to replace my stolen cologne from my last travel back in January.

It didn’t cross my mind at that time… but I actually bargained at the departmental store – and it worked! Got 50% off for the tie, and saved a 100,000 rupiah on the cologne. The only exchange is that the sales person keeps the cash and it doesn’t reach the cashier’s registry. Hmm… corruption at its best in Indonesia. Hehehehe! ;-P

Semmy & Imelda’s Wedding

This is what we came for. The function was at Klub Kelapa Gading, about 45 minutes away from Central Jakarta. It’s actually closer than it sounds but because traffic here is massive – 10 times worse than that of KL’s – it will appear that it’s so near yet so far. :-\



See that shine? Yeah, that’s the handsome me. πŸ˜‰ *eleh, perasan*



So yes, Semmy’s big day! Was also my first time seeing Semmy’s wife Imelda even though I’ve known Semmy since 2006. Semmy sure picked the right and gorgeous girl! I’m envious ;-P But hey, congratulations my man! You earn it! πŸ˜€



Me and Elle. My first time seeing her wearing a dress, LOL probably coz every time I see her we’re always wearing casual (we’re just staying one block away from each other) she was veeeery gorgeous that night too! For the record, she helped me pick the cologne and the tie! Thanks! πŸ˜€



Me and the Indonesian crew – Danny, Ferry, Agung.



L-R: Elle, Ferry, Agung (doing the “Semmy Smile”), Danny



L-R: Imelda, Semmy, Elle, me, Danny



L-R: Elle, me, Dee, Jodie



The new couple threw some gifts from up the stage, and Danny caught one of them! I got mine from the reception – so here we are posing with our souvenirs. πŸ˜›



A videographer placed the mic in front of me and apparently we supposed to give a testimonial on either of the couple, haha! So… just talk good stuff about Semmy! πŸ˜€



CONGRATULATIONS SEMMY & IMELDA! SEMOGA BAHAGIA DAN ABADI! πŸ™‚

P.S. Oh hey, on our way out of the place we saw these πŸ˜‰



Secret Orange Roshan has been discovered!

And to drink some wine to end the merry night!



19th April: The Kopi Luwak Episode



So the story goes like this, that these animals “The Luwak” from Sumatra. They eat these red, ripe coffee cherry, shit them out… and then people like me drink them. Hence Kopi Luwak.



Okay I know the details sound gross; I was disturbed too when the coffee was made by the waitress in front of me. My Indonesian buddies insist though.



Hmm… this is like deja vu. Very much like when the Ambuyat was made in front of me when I was in Brunei.



I gotta hand it. Even though I’m not a coffee lover, it tasted good! πŸ™‚ I think the Kopi Luwak would have sold more if they didn’t make up such a gross story. But then from a marketer’s standpoint, perhaps it wouldn’t have been half as successful without an interesting story like that.

They also brand it “the most expensive coffee in the world”, which I have a hard time agreeing to. Again even though I don’t appreciate coffee, I’ve already known of coffee and coffee beans that are more expensive just back in Malaysia, let alone other parts of the world.



Agung doing the “Semmy smile” again. πŸ™‚ Wanna know how the “Semmy smile” came about? During the wedding, Semmy was anxious so when he smiled, it was funny. At least we think so πŸ˜‰ And since then, the term “Semmy smile” was introduced! πŸ˜€ *eeEEEeeeee*



Danny and Brokencode. Did you know that Kopi Luwak is also the same place Agung met up with the other marketers in Indonesia? πŸ˜‰

Sliding Down From 7th to 3rd Floor

Still at FX. We decided to go try the slide out. πŸ™‚



Did you know that Danny and Brokencode were very scared to try this out? ;-P HAHA! But in the end they did – and we’re proud of them!



*well actually there’s nothing scary of it, don’t let the installation intimidate you* the slide lasts less than 10 seconds.

Can’t believe Vince Tan actually chickened out when he was here months ago. HAHA. Wuss.



Agung’s turn.



Now Danny. He fainted by the time he reached the bottom of the slide. LOL



Again don’t let the installation of the slide intimidate you! πŸ˜‰

Karaoke!!!

They sang mostly Indonesian songs. But by virtue of knowing Bahasa Malaysia, I could follow along πŸ˜›



Die Settlers Von Catan!



I brought the board game here too! So Elle and I taught Ferry, Agung and Danny how to play the game… and we played one long round since it was our last night in Indonesia. πŸ™‚

LOL it started out friendly and later, yep a lot of “true colors”, cut throat-ing and “blackhatting” as Danny and Agung pointed out, started to happen! And yeaaaa… I won! Wah weeee…! πŸ˜€



LOL Agung demands a rematch… we shall see when they come to Malaysia this early May! πŸ˜‰

20th April: Go Home!



I enjoyed myself more in Jakarta this time around! Before this, I admit I was looking forward to coming back home even before I left for Jakarta! LOL because there’s little places of interest in Jakarta (or so I thought) and I couldn’t help but make an unfair comparison to Bali.

But I was wrong. I really enjoyed myself more this time around – and I know I have to be back again… Padro’s and Dee’s are next on the wedding calendar!

Personal Updates

It’s already coming to the first quarter of the year. Time really flies when you’re busy, or having fun, or both!

I’ve been posting up a lot of photos and pictures in place of my ‘text’ updates, this is really slowly turning into a photo blog! πŸ™‚

Figured it’s about time I let you in on what I’ve been doing for the past 3 months, my aspirations and what I’m planning to do! (in no particular order)

1. Forex. Progress with my ‘paper asset’ is reaaaaally slow. In fact, I made a loss on GBPUSD on the third week of March. Trend exhaustion, I was told. Really sucks when I got all my methods and filters checked like 19/20 only to find a 1/20 chance it would fail. I should be thankful my account is still intact and it didn’t blow. I’ve been staying away from the charts since, as I’m experimenting a fear-free, sure-win approach so that I can free my mind and time to pursue the growth of my Internet Business. I am not letting go of that “road to $1million” goal in Forex easily!

2. Just wrapped up my 4-Day PLR Sale with Stephen Luc! (29th March – 1st April) I closed the launch on Day 3 as it sold out by then. Together with 8 other affiliates – probably more – we made US$21,687.90 in total sales just 3 days! Great for less than a week’s work, and it surely raised the bar in our mini-launches, breaking my past record of $14747 in 3 days. Really excited with my new tested discovery on multiple Upsells and the inclusion of high ticket products as part of the selling chain. πŸ™‚

3. Now I’m looking forward to the next BIGGER – BETTER – MEANER launch I’m working with Elle. πŸ™‚ We’re targeting to launch the first PLRGold: Blowout on May 10, 2010. Will be importing over all the tried and proven strategies I’ve done with Stephen over for this launch, and this will be taking over PLRGold: Motivation’s place as the third and latest installment in my PLRGold franchise! πŸ™‚

4. 14-15th March 2010. Was in Singapore. Dylan ‘the punk’ invited me over and Jani Ghaffor’s short visit in Singapore was an excuse reason for me to come over. It’s been awhile since I last networked face-to-face with other Internet Marketers and I was curious to know of Jani’s reputation. Also paid Dylan’s new Candy Man store a visit. He blew away SGD90,000 for the entire setup of this offline business! Now you know why I have high regards for Singaporean entrepreneurs. Our counterparts are very, very unlike us here, and their thermometer for success is truly at a level higher than ours!

5. Been active in church as of lately. The last time I went to the St. Ignatius Church was in March 2003, just before I went to the UK to start my 3-year unconventional, hellish journey. It’s been 6 years I’ve not returned to this church – I’ll save this story with its unique twist of events for another time.

6. Mom and Ashley finally moved into our new Lakeview house! 25th March 2010 ought to be a historical date for our family, and should be celebrated every year. πŸ˜‰ You see, we never had our own property. My mom never did for the 49 years of her life… until now. My father had been – and still is – a very, very, very, very, very bad family leader and provider (two middle fingers up yours, laopei) and in 2003, we lost LITERALLY EVERYTHING. I am glad that over the years, we started to get everything back one-by-one: from being homeless to getting a roof over our heads for starters (read: rent), bought our own car (make that 2 now), and finally our own house!

7. While we’re on the subject of properties, I have a new dream: to become a real estate tycoon! My lifetime goal: to own 100 properties! Having played CashFlow 101 and Smart Money, I have learned that the way to truly succeed BIG TIME and become TRULY financially free is to own real estate. I’ve got the Internet Business part down pat (non-tangible business), now I’m working on my Forex investment (paper asset), and after I become wildly successful with Forex trading, it’s time to move on to the biggest game of money: real-estate (tangible asset). This will also accelerate my journey to reach my US$10million goal too. At this point, I am still not educated on real estate but I am confident in my abilities to take on any challenges that will come my way.

8. 17th – 20th April: Elle and I are going to… Jakarta! πŸ™‚ Semmy is finally getting married and our Internet Marketing bunch in Malaysia have been invited. Not sure about Vince, Melvin, Jimmy, and Khai yet – but Elle and I have already bought our flight tickets. Don’t plan to stay there for too long since Jakarta (no offense) is like a ‘post-nuclear era’ kind of place. Wouldn’t mind staying longer if it were Bali, though. πŸ˜‰

9. Another country I look forward to visiting this is Egypt! It’s exotic and I’ve always marveled at its mystery. Currently arranging my own crew to go there, targeting July!

10. Did you also know? I’m currently taking up Mandarin classes. πŸ™‚ I was embarrassed when I first walked into the Language House @ Atria, and told the clerk I am a “total banana”. Obviously she laughed at it. Haha! πŸ˜› Signed up for Level 1 Intensive Mandarin – I am taught to read, write and speak. It’s been 4 classes already, there’s a total of 12 in all for this Level, and there are 3 Levels in all. I have no problems remembering the new words I’ve learned (learning pinyin for now), but my pronunciation in Mandarin is still bad at this point. Well, keep on learning! Zai Jian! πŸ™‚

Justin’s Farewell Party

20th March 2010. Saturday. My crib. πŸ™‚

Justin Lee was going to leave for the Ireland! This came across as a shocking news to everyone at the RYM, but it’s been planned for a long time.

So we in turned planned up something for him: a farewell party over at my place. πŸ™‚

I rented the BBQ pits for the entire day and thankfully I managed to secure the place; sometimes booking in advance won’t help and moreover Saturdays are very popular as other churches and organizations also rent the place.



THE ORIGINAL PLAN: Kevin Avinash was to call Justin out for a casual game of pool at Casa Tropicana, and lead him to the BBQ pit where we would throw him the surprise!

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: In a terrible mishap, Kevin SMS’ed everyone involved in throwing the surprise party… including Justin himself. πŸ™ Dum dumz.

LOL



Even I didn’t buy into the cheesy setup – it was only less than 2 weeks ago Justin approached me to see if I could rent the place for Fun Nite.

And Casa Tropicana is a very, very unlikely place to play pool even though the new place just opened up. (and that is at the first floor, I must add… which means you don’t need any key or access card to get there)



We should be glad that in spite of the surprise being blown prematurely Justin still obliged to play along, haha! πŸ™‚

What he didn’t count on was yet another surprise we had in store for him: we dunked him into the pool.

Boy Band WIN

Since Justin also knows Eugene San and Daniel Khoo, called my Ex-DJian friends over too.


L-R: Eugene, Daniel, Justin, me

Posaaaah!


The only reason this pic has some ‘boy band’ quality is thanks to Eugene’s dreadlock hair. πŸ˜›

Getting Dunked Into The Pool



Almost every other people – myself included – got dunked into the pool. πŸ™‚ Was a bit afraid the security guards would chase us away or the neighbors would complain to the Management. I’ve stayed here for almost a year already and no one THAT happening ever came to use the pool THAT way. Not after 10PM. πŸ˜› Hee hee!



Me and Debbie Debz Debz! Known her from Sunday School since we were 15! Barely changed. Good or bad thing, you decide!

At My Crib

Later we cleaned up the place and since the lights were mostly off at the pool area, we moved up to my place. I never had so many people in my house before! This is twice the size of the crowd that came to my place for housewarming last year.



Then the kids picked up my Darth Vader replica light saber. Never failed to impress the newcomers to my lair. πŸ˜‰


Turn to the dark side!

Ooowf! Castration!


Have fun in Ireland Justin! I’m sure many of us will miss you, and hope to see you again when you return a few years from now!