Room 1626, Vistana Hotel

I really am sleepy tonight. Perhaps I'll have better luck this time.

The opening ceremony was okay, if you ignore the fact that the press was soooooo trigger-happy. We had to pose in our national costumes for like a zillion pictures! And that was really annoying, because everyone turned up in nice, elaborate, proper national costumes and were gushing over each others' outfits.

I hid behind the plants and pretended Singapore didn't exist.

Thankfully we had to change to business attire after that. I returned to the hall in my brand new blazer. :P

The day's first talk was on the Malaysia Truly Asia campaign and Malaysia's tourism industry in general. Here I was, leaving my SP logo project back in Singapore, only to learn about the Malaysia Truly Asia logo!

The talk wasn't that bad though. We learnt some interesting things, like how Singaporeans formed the largest number of tourists in Malaysia last year. The number? Over 9 million. So it's like everyone visited Malaysia twice!

Anyway.

We finally left the confines of the hotel for lunch, which was at the 421 m-high Menara Kuala Lumpur. (It's slightly shorter than the Oriental Pearl in Shanghai.)

We squeezed into the lift and rode up to the Seri Angkasa Revolving Restaurant. Of course we took pictures first, but since the Petronas Towers were not in sight yet, we quickly settled down to eat. There were two buffets - Eastern and Western - and a long dessert table. You could either walk around the restaurant to get to them, or wait for wherever-you're-seated to revolve past your desired buffet. :P

I enjoyed the black pepper spaghetti and smoked salmon so much that I had a second helping. I also tried a few other things I've since forgotten.

UNFORTUNATELY, I didn't have time for dessert, which was sooooo sad because there was ice cream and marshmallows and chocolate fondue!

We left the place and boarded the bus back to the hotel. I fell asleep (as expected) with the curtain tickling my nose. Once back in the hotel, we had like 10 minutes to return to our rooms if we wanted. I finally changed my tiny little clutch to the handy (and professional-looking) laptop-carrier-like bag we had all been given.

The second talk was boring and the speaker knew it. I felt sorry for him. We spent over 1.5 hours learning about ASEAN (I can still remember some stuff from my Primary 6 report!) and all the agreements they've signed, as well as the association's principles, structure, yada yada.

We were half-asleep at the end and gladly headed to our rooms for 2 hours of rest.

My roommate fell asleep and I didn't want to disturb her, so I went to make phone calls on the big comfy couch near the elevators on our floor.

The problem was that my card was the one in the electricity-activator thingy. So I couldn't get back in unless I knocked on the door.

I think I spent 10 minutes hammering on the door, till I realised I could just use my phone to rap on the door instead.

Not that either helped!

Finally I gave up (it was nearly time for the next talk and we hadn't had dinner) and went to beg the receptionist for a spare card. This was more complicated than expected, because apparently I was registered under room 1507, not 1626. Who knows how or why I got switched. But eventually I convinced her to give me the card.

Got in just in time to change and have a quick dinner downstairs, where for some reason everyone at the table was curious and excited about visiting Singapore.

I've never met anyone excited to visit Singapore, and since I don't know what's so exciting about Singapore, that is just SO STRANGE.

After dinner we had an endless talk (I'm not exaggerating - that was only the first part and it'll be continued later) on journalism. I suppose the topic was fairly interesting, so I managed to stay awake. But then again the air conditioner was so crazily cold that I would've just frozen solid if I fell asleep.

We ended past 10.30 p.m. and some of us stayed for supper by the poolside. There was green bean soup and deep friend sweet potato, but we were more interested in taking pictures.