I am sitting here at Starbucks KLCC, waiting for the rest to arrive. I am going to Port Dickson on Microsoft’s accord for the media offsite.

They are launching the brand new Microsoft Office 2010. The last Microsoft media offsite was one of the best media trip I’ve been to. It was in Langkawi and I think I blogged about it.

Anyway, I will most probably update my blog when I’m there. I will have internet connectivity and if there aren’t, I have my mobile unlimited plans. It’s in Malaysia anyway.

Until then, see you guys soon. Gotta finish pretending to be a yuppy and finish this:

I’m typing this at Starrbucks KLIA (the one after the immigration) and the next time I update this blog will be from my hotel room in Japan, using their super freakishly fast internet connection. Well, that’s what I hear lah, I don’t really know how fast is it.

Anyway, last week was pretty hectic. In fact, the whole of February was hectic. The Chinese New Year holiday didn’t help with the magazine’s dateline at all.

We went back to work on the fifth day of CNY but no one else was working. Products were not coming in, advertisements were delayed because of CNY. The short February month made it worse.

I managed to finish the magazine just before the trip, i.e. 3 hours before I had to leave to the airport. Let’s hope everything is smooth sail after this.

I’ll try to update everyday whilst in Japan, if I get an internet connection. Until then, happy Chap Goh Meh!!!

I am at the Subang airport right now typing this on my iPhone. Going to Singapore for the Dell event I mentioned in my last post.

Look at the propellers on this Fokker! I’m not too sure if it’s a Fokker though.

I am super busy with work right now so I took some time off to write here.

My writer Jee Yee took a week off last week and went to Bali. In his absence, we got three invites. Overseas invite. Maybe he needs to go off more often so we get more invites.

The first one is an invite to Showcase Nokia in Bangkok on the 22-23 February. I’ll be sending Jee Yee there so that he can experience a true media junket! Nokia has great media junket, as seen from my recent Germany trip.

A few days later, I got an email from Epson wanting to send us to Japan for their 3LCD technology’s 20th anniversary. I didn’t think twice and replied the mail the minute I got it! I’ve never been to Japan and this will be my first time. (See below)

After that invite, Lola asked me if we’re interested to go to Singapore for a Dell event, sort of like a follow up to CES earlier this month, where they will be showcasing a few of the products that they unveiled in CES. The trip is scheduled on 1st February.

I still don’t know if I should send Jee Yee or to go there myself. He is very interested at the Alienware M11X and they will be showing it there in this event. However, he just came back from a day trip in Singapore with Google and it’s been some time since I met up with Wei Yih. We’ll decide later lah.

Now for the Japan trip! The trip is 5 days, from 1st to 5th March but from what I gathered, I’ll be spending a lot of time travelling within Japan itself. I don’t have the itinerary with me but they sent me a brief skeleton of it:

1 March – Matsumoto Castle visit, welcome dinner

This means I’ll most probably be arriving in the afternoon. Matsumoto Castle is this really nice castle in Nagano. I’ve only seen these type of castles in comics!

Picture from Wikipedia used under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.

2 March – Shimauchi plant tour, journey to Tokyo, free and easy in Tokyo

Based on my “plant tour experiences”, the plant tour will take about 3 hours. I don’t know how are we going to Tokyo, maybe by train, maybe by bus, but I guess I’ll be reaching Tokyo in the afternoon. Apparently, Tokyo is huge because when I tell people I’m going to Tokyo, they asked me which part. I don’t know lah…hehe..

3 March – Flight to Chitose, Chitose plant tour

Based on the map, I think the flight will take about an hour and the plant tour will take about 3 hours. This day is most probably spent working the whole day.

4 March – Free & easy in Sapporo

Finally, a free and easy day. I don’t know what is in Sapporo but from what I gathered on the internet, Sapporo has about 103cm of snow in March and it’s snows 23 days the whole month. It’s been a long time since I played with snow. I’m looking forward to this.

5 March – Flight back to Tokyo and return

This whole day will most probably be a travelling day.

So there you go. My little update. I’ll update when I finish this month’s issue.

This is the last installment of my Stuttgart trip posts.

In this entry, I’ll talk about the free stuff I got form Nokia World.

The red wine I got from the Nokia SEAP dinner. They gave each of us one bottle. Luckily I brought a spare bag with me. If not, I’ll most probably be drinking it in Stuttgart.

Nokia Bluetooth Stereo Headset (BH-214). All media people got this. As we were walking out from one of the interview rooms, they passed each of us one unit. Not too sure if I’m gonna use it or not.

I did what Malaysians do best – getting free gifts! I went to the Nokia Comes With Music booth and played a simple game. Three really easy questions and I got this, a 4GB microSDHC card. I told the others about this and they did it the next day, they got 2GB. I guess I was lucky.

They had a wall mural outside the experience lounge for people to write their thoughts. I wrote one and I got this, a Nokia WH-701 headset. I don’t have a Nokia phone with me to try it out and it is not compatible with the phones I have with me right now. I looks really high quality though.

They launched the Nokia MD-9 loud speaker there and we all got one each. I’m not too sure if everyone attended Nokia World got it or not as they were giving it out as a token if you’ve participated in the games at the Nokia World Party. The Malaysian and Singaporean media got it by default though. It comes with a Nokia branded gold plated 3.5mm to 2.5mm converter as well. I’ve never seen a Nokia branded one in Malaysia.

Since A(H1N1) is on the rise every where in the world, they had Nokia branded hand sanitizer at the counters everyday. These were snapped up pretty fast. I’m pretty sure it’s another brand with a Nokia sticker but it smells nice!

At the first keynote, this notepad and a pen was on every chair in the hall. You know, journalists and notepads – they are inseparable!

Well that’s all the things I got for free at Nokia World 2009. Let’s hope I’ll get invited to more media junkets soon!