St.Columba's Reunion 270609 - Preparation for Dinner

Snap of our door gifts and chocolate gifts from Lily...took this at Salia's house while waiting for her to bring down the wrapping papers & stationeries.

De Boss belanja oiii...apa gik....gohetttttttttt terus!. A little warning from him though....hehehe, mun kitak urghang berebut bergaut nak balit aku sik mayar kelak....so we had to wait for him to finish his food n smoking (sabar jakla.hehehe)...it was already about 2 pm then and both me and Salia were worried about some unpacked lucky draw gifts which we bought that morning.....

Discussion ended at Belian Hall and continued at the coffee-house

Another shot of the self-appointed committee...hehehe...this time minus Naza who left earlier on, Freda took the picture

Some more discussions, Naza left early and Lily joined us. Azeez used to call himself as Azeez Taylor cos he was a fan of Duran Duran, though I think his hair then resembles Nick Rhodes...ahaks!!..(btw if some of you may not recall or know any of them ..nvm..if you're in my generation I'm sure you'll know how gorgeous and handsome the guys were, .............I mean Duran Duran wink! wink! wink!)

The program booklet courtesy of AXN International

One of the slides, my school's badge....I'm proud to be a Columbian!!!!

Sue and Azeez going thru the slides again, counter check!....

Checking! Checking! Checking!

Me n Sue, first time meeting each other after 1986, cos both of us attended Lower Six at SMK Lutong then. Just a little info, those days, only a few schools were offering Form Six studies. So the two selected schools in Miri then were Kolej Tuanku Hj Bujang and SMK Lutong. So it was quite a culture shock for me then to meet up with other students all over from Miri, Bintulu, Limbang and Lawas. I did not complete mine cos I went to ITM to continue my studies. Now, Sue is a lawyer and holding one of the top posts at a well-known construction company in KL. After all these years, she is still the same old Sue that I've known since Form 4.

A sneak peek and some other final touch-ups before the dinner


Those program booklets on the table were sponsored by one of our generous friend

Naza & Azeez looking at some slides Azeez has prepared for that night

The self-appointed committee, Lily belum datang gik waktu tok.

How it began

Actually the idea of having a reunion was mooted about 10 years ago, around that time I was making frequent visits to Miri and started to look for my old classmates. I manage to find only a handful though and the idea sort of slipped away for a while. But I was determined to have one sooner or later. The opportunity came when I met Salia for the first time in 2007. I last saw her during the last day of our final paper MCE in 1985. I only heard about her there and then but never get to see her. She was attending a secretarial program at Crown Plaza Riverside that time. Bonnie was the first person that she contacted and then Bonnie told me about it. So the three of us met at Tun Jugah Foodcourt (myself, Biak and Salia) Apart from catching up on old times, we started to exchange infos on our friends whereabouts etc.

Upon her return to Miri, she continued looking for friends and started to spread the news about the reunion. Thanks to Facebook we manage to hook up more friends and received overwhelming responses from the others.

Preparation for Dinner

Since the venue would be in Miri, Salia and Naza decided that we have it at Eastwood Valley. We booked Eastwood Valley as early from last February and the quotation per pax was $35.00. So we the self-appointed committee members decided to charge $50.00 per pax to enable us to get door gifts as well plus other charges that we expected to surface later. As preparation for the dinner progressed, I am very proud to mention that we had a few generous donors who voluntarily chip in(of course before that we had someone who managed to coax them first.....wink! wink! wink!). We had fantastic door gifts, hampers, a friend gave cash (we bought utility items such as toaster, iron, cooler & cocktail set) as lucky draw items and some contributed tupperwares (these tuppperwares were also on a last minute request, another someone was brave enough to get 2 of our friends to contribute something). On top of that one of us sponsored for the karaoke set. Another sponsored for the printing of souvenir programme where we had some old pictures printed in the programme. To add cream to the topping, we managed to appoint a photographer for that evening which we paid with the balance of dinner fee plus some more personal contributions from two of our generous friends. Since some of the committee members were not all in Miri, 3 of us are in KL and myself in Kuching..we only communicated via emails, facebook, phone calls n smses but it was job well done!!! Of course initially we had one complaining about the $50.00 coupled with some other setbacks but that didn't stop us. No!No!No!No!No!...

After the morning's meeting I felt as if I was back in Form 4 & 5, giggling, teasing and cracking some jokes with each other and not forgetting some gossips here and there. All the necessary pictures are already here so for my next entry on the dinner. Watch out for the next posting.