Tuesday, March 30, 2010

A Trip To The North To Join AOC Northern TT

Last Friday, the AOC members organized their TTs at three different locations simultaneously. The northern group has scheduled their TT long time ago and when the central and southern groups found out, they also decided to hold their TT at the same time.

The idea was to hold the TT at each location and then each location will provide live updates via Internet. However I guess it didn’t work out that way since the TT location for the northern group was not ideal for Internet access. Updates were done via mobile phone so there is no live images beam across locations.

I was informed of the TT at the last minute hence I was undecided whether to attend or not. Then I found out that one member of the central group is heading up north to join the northern group TT. That’s gave me an idea that I should make a trip up north too. Besides joining the northern group TT, I also want to take this opportunity to visit Penang as I haven’t been there for quite a while.

I graduated from USM so it is probably a good time for me to go back to the campus and check out the place to see how has it progress since I left there 23 years ago. Also I wanted to meet up with some of my university mates from Penang that I have not met for many years. So good enough reason to take a long drive!

This is also a good time to give my giant another long distance run as the last one I did was 7 months ago. I left Kuala Lumpur city at around 2:45pm and the drive up north was rather casual. The original plan was to meet up with another AOC member at Ipoh and then convoy together from there. However due to last minute changes I didn’t stop by at Ipoh. Instead I stopped at Sg. Perak R&R area to wait for two other AOC members, one from KL and another from Cameron Highland.

The 3 giants then convoy together the rest of the journey to Penang Island.
Crossing the Penang Bridge

The traffic on a Friday afternoon is pretty smooth and we arrive at Penang around 6pm and had to bear with the after work hour traffic before we reach our hotel respectively.
Before Hitting the After Work Jam

Once we have freshen up, we meet up again at E-Gate with the rest of the AOC members coming from other locations before we convoy to our final destination.
Checkpoint Behind E-Gate

The convoy took off from E-Gate heading toward a restaurant in Batu Maung. As we had to wait for everyone to depart together, it was rather late when we reach our final destination.

Where We Had Our Dinner

This TT is slightly different from the other I have attended as we have a sit-down dinner instead of a teh tarik session. We only have 11 giants in our convoy but we had 40 attendees sharing the foods in 4 tables.

Two Of The Tables With Food Ready

This is slightly different from other TT as the family members of the AOC members are more involved in this TT compared to others.

AOC Memebr Enjoying Their Foods

Also it is commendable that some non-AOC members actually took the trouble to join us at the very last minute at the invite of one of the AOC members. One of them was in Muar in the morning and after he fetch his family, drove all the way up to Penang. Another was visiting Sg. Petani and drop by last minute to join the TT.

It was nice to see all the family members enjoyed the TT and have their share of fun along the way.

After the dinner, the group convoyed back to an open car park at E-Gate and start to have a group photo session and the customary showing off each other cars and sharing of technical information.

Line Up For Photo Shoot

As it is getting late, those with family have to leave early while other proceeds to Padang Kota Lama for the real teh tarik session. However the nearby stalls at Esplanade are closing at 1am so the group only spent a short time there before we all call it a day.

All in all, it was a good TT as we have very good turn out from the members and their family. Not only the AOC members get to enjoy this outing, their family members also can share their passion during the TT.

I think this is a good sign that the TT for AOC members are more family oriented and I believed more and more members will bring their family to such future events.

Having done a northern TT, I am wondering if I will be doing a southern one in future.

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