Trip to Johor Bahru! (Part 1)

Yo guys, I went for a company meeting at JB on friday! Before I start describing the journey, I remembered the name of the donuts and coffee shop! It is called "J.CO Donuts & Coffee" hahas

Man this is going to be a super long post, so I'll split into 2 parts :X

Crossing Over
Mr Robin Tan, my boss, arranged for Jeffrey, a colleague, to meet me at Woodlands. From there we will take bus 950 to JB.

I was thinking what to wear as I didn't want to appear rich, 'cause JB isn't the safest place in the world. I wanted to wear a T-shirt with bermudas and slippers. However, I felt the peace of God after praying and knew that everything's gonna be alright. Thus, I decided to glorify God by looking sharp rather than to be paranoid and dress sloppily :D

Or maybe I'm zilian.

Promptly, I changed into a T-shirt and jeans. I opened my passport and was shocked to find out that the last time I travelled to Malaysia was in 28 July 2002! That was even before I came to City Harvest! Thank God that I had Jeffrey with me, or I would be very lost. In fact, I was quite blur as I went through the customs and the various counters - I was even stopped by the security staff 3 times on my way to JB and back.

Jeffrey and I met in Woodlands at 10.10am as we were supposed to rendevous with Mr Robin in JB at 11am. Upon arrival, we waited for Mr Robin's car at City Square shopping center. As we chatted, Jeffrey told me something that surprised me. The company's office was actually Mr Robin's house itself! (O_O)"

Finally, Mr Robin arrived to pick us up. As we entered the car, I took a glimpse at his attire. The boss of Envisage Reality was wearing a T-Shirt with shorts and slippers! Cool huh? XD

Yup, that's the dress code for the games industry! :)

Lunch at Johor Bahru
Mr Robin drove us to have lunch at some "ulu" (obscure, unknown) place. This "restaurant" boasts a wide variety of food, ranging from western to Chinese to Japanese and Korean. To me, it was more like a high-class hawker center than a restaurant.

What a "ulu" place.

I ordered a Japanese Spicy Chicken set and a Black Soya Bean drink. The food was pretty average, nothing that special. The drink was quite blend too.

You must be thinking "I didn't know Israel was so particular about food". Well, I will gladly eat any food but value for money is of interest to me :D If the food is free, I won't really mind about the quality hahas

I paid 10RM(SGD$4) for the meal and Mr Robin covered the rest (Yay!).

The Sacred Office
After the meal, we went to Envisage Reality's sacred office - Mr Robin's abode. His home was super grand and beautiful! From the outside, it resembles some sort of barred fortress:

Mr Robin's House!

Another view of the house

The sliding gate of his house

I was further wow-ed as we entered his home! It was extremely spacious and beautifully decorated, except that it was kinda messy haha. Right in the center of the living room was the workspace - about 7 computers arranged in a circular fashion. It looked like a secret operations base or a military command center. Only it wasn't underground. XD

Mr Robin wanted to protect the IP (Intellectual Property) of our projects, so he'd rather me not take photos of the bungalow's interior. Still, its the coolest office I have ever seen in my life haha.

He showed me several project demos, including the game I'll be working on. Thank God for granting my desire - I'm no longer called to produce the casino game!!! Instead, I'll be working on an awesome XBox 360 game based on an old classic game! :D

Property Viewing
We were at the "office" for awhile when Mr Robin had to pick up another colleague, Geng Yuan, one of our artists. He's a talented mainland Chinese who earned singaporean citizenship.

After picking him up, Mr Robin took us to see JB's housing estates. He wanted to open my eyes to see how expensive HDB flats in Singapore are.

Viewing JB's property

He brought us (Jeffrey, Geng Yuan and I) to a condominium. The place is pretty cheap, but the scenery was kinda slum-ish and there aren't many facilities, save for a small swimming pool.

Nice atmospheric view but the landscape is marked with zinc-roofed houses and construction work.

View of the living room

At least there are some nice terrace houses from this view.

Mr Robin then chatted the property agents. They discussed about loans, monthly payments, interest rates, renting, etc. I learnt quite a bit about the property market, and discovered the meaning of the term "mark-up" :D

Hey wait a minute! I thought we're supposed to have a project meeting. How did this turn out to be a property business trip? Haha it was fun though.



Well, I'll continue the next half of my trip to Johor Bahru on my next post! Keep a lookout for it! =D