Since nothing much has been happening, I'll just write about my 'trip' to the Brunei's Ministry of Defence.
A few acquaintances and I met with the Deputy Minister of Defence a few days ago. There's always this hubbub going on whenever people are going to meet him (or anyone with a title in fact). We had to stand up whenever he came into the room. We definitely had to be early. The DM is not a man to wait. We also had to address him as 'Pehin' or 'Sir'. So we were pretty much kept on our toes.
The DM wanted to meet us just to 'catch-up' I guess. There wasn't much of a formal topic. The DM was pretty much a laid back man (in front of us anyways). He talked about sports, music, blogs (!), books, facebook(!) and his accident more than a week ago.
He had this accident where he broke his nose after flying Superman style off a horse. He even joked about how he asked the doctor if he could model his nose after a celebrity. And the doctor was like, 'Don't push your luck'. Haha.
The DM actually mistook my name for ANGELA! That's like the biggest mistake anyone has made on my name. I was called Jennifer, but that's reasonable because it starts with J. But Angela is so far off. When he called me Angela, I thought I heard wrong so I was like, 'Huh?' with a blur expression. Then he checked his file and corrected my name. Well I wouldn't mind changing my name so you can give me a scholarship. Angela is a nice name. I would like to be called Angela in when I start my university life.
So actually, when we talk with the DM, it always turns out to be quite a fun conversation. He's an open-minded guy. Tzia Ming even asked him if he had Facebook! The DM was like asking us if we had any questions for him. Suddenly Tzia Ming asked, 'Sir, do you have facebook?' I was like open-mouth shocked when he asked. Firstly, he's such a busy man with an important position, it's like asking Sultan if we could be online buddies. Secondly, Tzia Ming was implying that if the DM did have a facebook account, could we add him? That was like asking Sultan to read your personal diary. Maybe not that bad, but seriously, can you imagine if your future employers judged you just by looking at your Friendster/Facebook profile? You would be more yourself there than in an interview. It was like how the DM asked me how often I ran. I replied, 'once a week'. I'll leave that to your imagination.
The DM didn't know what Facebook was, which was a good thing. We had to explain that it was a social networking place. Then he told us all about his own social network. He meets people from all over the world, gets invited to weddings that are worthy on E! if they ever did a segment on big weddings in Asia. For a wedding he attended, one wedding invitation costed probably around a hundred dollars. It was engraved in glass. And that's the invitation alone! For my future wedding, I'll be totally environmental and just send SMS invitations instead. And use the extra money on a bouncer, haha!
Then we had a little tour of the area around his office. It's so cool that they actually had a concrete koi pond in the building. That's the only part of the tour that caught my attention, apart from the DM showing off his iPhone.
That's basically how interesting my holiday is so far. Thank you for your attention. You may continue watching Bob the Builder now.
PS, is it normal for people to ask for autographs from ministers?
