Since 7th June 2008, I have been engaged with my one and only fiancée and virtually out of the ‘market’. I never really imagine myself being soon-to-be-married guy but the fact is here I am enjoying every second of it. I mentioned in my past few post about setting up a section on my blog about my “Road to Wedding Day” preparations and this is it, the first post for the section.

In this 1st post I’ll share some of the photos captured from my phone. These photos are from pre-engagement day activities.

The journey begins after the day (or night) that we decided to take our relationship to the next level. After that beautiful moment which I shall keep between me and her, the planning kicks off. Setting dates is one of many tricky tasks that I have to go through. Suddenly I have like 1001 things to do!

WEDDING COURSE!

Amongst the first thing that we did was attending a mandatory marriage course organized by a certified organization. My fiancée and I along with our 2 friends attended the 2-day course in Zura’s Akademik. Sound very familiar? This is ‘the place’ where all celebrities, ministers, famous people go for wedding course. Why do they go there, I have no freakin idea, probably word of mouth? Why did I go there? Simply because it has available slots and it’s reasonably priced. I could not care less about those famous people

It turned out to be a cool course anyway. Very beneficial and I learned a lot of theory stuff of being a husband and a father (typing that out still scares me!). Anyway the place is well-equipped and comfortable despite being housed in an old building in Bangsar.

It even has a mock setup of a wedding ceremony.

And various checklists for different states that have different procedures. This I find very helpful. Tried to look at other states’ procedures (just in case) before I get caught by my fiancée which made me stick to Johor

The less-positive thing about Zura’s Akademik is how they keep pushing for ‘other services’ such as insurances, photography services, and wedding cards during the breaks. It is nothing wrong but after a while it is repetitive and rather annoying. Also they have this notice board with all the photographs of famous people attending the wedding course at Zuras Akademik. Many caught my attention.

But this one tops it all.

If you haven’t heard of her, she’s one famous actress.

MEET THE PARENTS

One of the first things that I did was bringing my parents to meet my fiancée’s family. It was an impromptu trip to Johor as I just came back from 5-day trip to Singapore. Although it is not a mandatory thing and our families have met before a couple of times, it is still nice to have a courtesy visit prior to engagement day.

Edy accompanied me while the ‘adults’ were discussing on the engagement.

Fortunately it went smoothly and both our parents agreed for us to get engaged. At that time I was one happy but tired dude!

THE ENGAGEMENT RING

Unlike westerners who propose on their knees with a diamond ring in hand, a Malay guy is supposed to follow the Malay culture, hence diamond ring can only be given during engagement ceremony (not when being proposed).

After some comprehensive market study (yeah rite!), I decided to go for a simple yet nice ring from Habib Jewels. Conveniently I know one of the people there so bargaining and selecting was not an issue.

We had fun choosing…

…and negotiating…..

….the only not-so-fun part is this part…$$$$ there goes half of my monthly salary hehe

But it is worth every single cent

On the next post, I’ll share some photos of the ‘fun of shopping’ for my engagement day.

As part of my side project’s avtivity, i went to The Curve to cover the CIMB Malaysian Open Squash finale with my brother’s family and some of the friends from the site. We did request for a media pass to allow better photos but did not get any reply from SRAM. Too bad. The tickets were rather costly (RM30) especially since everyone can actually watch, take photos of the matches FOR FREE!!!! from higher floors. There was not a proper ticket booking system, no online reservation/ticketing neither. Definitely a letdown.

Luckily the matches are good. Nicol David sailed through a staight set win in the finals! Full review available here.

Today, my grandmother passed away. Im posting this from my mobile in bt pahat.

Semoga rohnya dicucuri rahmat danditempatkan bersama mukminin. Amin

Al-Fatihah

I am sure most of us are familiar with the term “Knowledge Management”. Knowledge management involves creating, coordinating, combining, saving, retrieving and distributing knowledge. While it is frequently used in corporate sectors, knowledge management can also be applied to individuals referring to knowledge and experience we have gathered over years of our life span.

In line with the knowledge management concept, I’ve spent countless hours over the last 5 months writing an e-book to share my vast knowledge and experience in job-hunting. These are real encounters and lesson learnt through my own success and failures over few years of going through the job market to find the so-called ‘dream-job’.

Let me introduce, my first e-book. “Winning Jobs – Malaysian style”

If you are one of the many people that have faced frustration in finding a new job, then this is the e-book for you. You will soon discover your own potential that you can portrait throughout the job hunting process.

Taking a different approach, this e-book focuses on identifying and highlighting your strength as a job candidate rather than making you ‘the typical best candidate’ as being highlighted by many books out there. The contents are easy to follow, fun, straight forward, relevant and taken from Malaysian job market perspective.

This e-book will help you to unleash your true potential for you to market yourself. The reality nowadays is that finding a job especially at entry level and executive level is very difficult. The lower you are, the more competitors you are facing with. Imagine yourself as a product on a shelf in a hypermarket. You have your advantages in terms of education but so do others, you have a degree but so do others, you have strong extra-curricular activities but so do others. So what makes you stand out and be picked for a job? (Or be picked off the shelf in the hypermarket analogy).

The approach of this e-book is to make you realize what you have in you, highlight it in a way that makes you different from thousand other candidates and thus improving your chances to get the job that you want.

This is my 1st week of selling this e-book and it is starting to get some good response. I am selling this e-book currently at an introductory price of RM20. On top of that i’ll be giving FREE Cv/Resume check for everyone who buys the book!

For more details and to order, visit: http://www.ebook.azuanzahdi.com

I’ve been super busy with my work. Life has been crazy with lots of ’slavery’ work, preparations for the big day and day in, day out routine. I’ve just finished handling a conference/organization in Sunway, spent a couple of nights in Sunway Tower Hotel which is kind of cool.

Work aside, thing are moving forward nicely. Will try to blog on each of the items below

- Preparation for my wedding going ok both in terms of financiall and operational
- Work is ok. Hoping to finally get some increment and bonus soon before starting ‘my plan’
- Farewell Bravo Foxtrott Queen 1880 and Welcome Wisky Romeo Mike 1880.
- Side Project: E-book pre-launched, check out “Winning Jobs - Malaysian Style”
- Side Project: Nicol David Online - Gathering soon.
- Mardino Dot Com going strong and going Mystery

Till next time