Coincidently, the dinner date also fell on our 18th anniversary and I took the oppurtunity to bring my other half to the dinner. The dinner was supposed to start at 8.00PM but we only arrived at the location about half an hour past due to bad traffic. In fact, on that day, I have to cut-short a meeting with the big-boss at about 6.50PM and have to asked her permission to leave as I need to go home first and pick-up my other half to the dinner. Well, from the office to BJ, it took me more than an hour to arrive and no thanks to the the congested traffic due to heavy evening rain and thus delayed our journey to the hotel.
As we arrived, the dinner was just about to start. I guessed, many people were also late due to the rain. Most VIPs were already arrived and as we stepped into the ballroom, and were asked to share the table purchased by APS and were greeted by Dr Sallehudin and also his wife. After short speeches by Vice-Chairman of MNC-CIGRE and the chairman of TNB, the dinner started. I could not really recall how many courses of chinese dinner we were served but enough said that I skipped most of them after the third course. There was a 2 piece live band entertaining the 400 plus guests and I would say that they were not bad in what they did !Since the dinner was meant for charity, the organiser has decided to let key VIPs to sing using the karaoke machine on the stage. Well, for a VIP to sing, the guests were asked to bid on how much they would willing to pay for the singing. Chairman of TNB got the highest bid that night at RM3000 and the pledge was made by one of the IPP guests. I was also asked by the organiser to sing a song but I decided not to for many-many reasons.
here was also a mocked cheque presentation ceremony held where the organiser presented an amount of more than 30K to MAKNA chairman. This amount did not include the amount collected during the karaoke singing by the VVIPs. I think the organiser may have collected close to 40K alone that night !
To me the highlight of the dinner was when I received an honorary award as tribute to my service to the MNC-CIGRE until I 'retired' from the Secretary position early this year. I was given a new Canon G7 Digital Camera of which I was asked about this choice some two weeks before this. Chairman of MNC-CIGRE himself gave the 'award' to me and I am very honored to receive such recognition.
The dinner came to end at about 11.30PM. My other half was quite happy to accompany me as she also got to meet her friend whom she met when we were in Amsterdam 3-4 years ago. Well, so much about our annivesary celebration. I think this is one anniversary that will stick in our memory for long...Alhamdullilah. Oh yeah, the morning of the same day, MNC-CIGRE organised a free 1-Day Forum on Power Technologies open to the public. About 60 people from the power sector industry and also from the universities attended the forum. Several international speakers were invited to give talks on the future of power technology and I would say the forum was a resounding success judging on the full-capacity crowd filling up the ballroom..
No comments:
Post a Comment