My week in KL

I was in KL from April 19th to April 24th. Last month, I had applied to become one of the examiners for the Matriculation Program Examination papers, specifically the biology papers and i was accepted. So that's where i was last week, stuck in a hotel room for six days but it's worth it because we get paid 6 ringgit per exam script. This isn't the first time I've done this. I was also an examiner for the biology papers last year. I think this trip was more fun than the last and marking the exam scripts was easier because I have experience this time around. The 'Dynasty Hotel' was selected by the Malaysian Ministry of Education as the venue for this event. But i wouldn't recommend staying there ever, ever, EVER!!!

The problems started from the moment my colleagues and I checked in to the hotel. One would think that the management of the hotel would anticipate that we would all come at the same time and would want to check in at the same time. But they didn't anticipate this. We arrived at the hotel at around 1 p.m and we were told that we could only check in at 2 p.m. So we had to wait in the hotal lobby for 1 hour. No one wanted to go outside to pass the time because it was really hot and we were tired and not to mention hungry. When 2 o'clock finally arrived, we hastily made our way to the check in counter, thinking that they would provide a seperate check in counter as there were so many of us and it would interfere with other paying guests who wanted to check in. But there was no seperate check-in counter and we hadto line-up to check in. When i finally was able to check into my romm it was already THREE P.M. It took 2 hours from the moment we arrived to the moment i finally got my room, TWO hours.

The service is terrible and unprofessional, the room conditions for many of my unlucky colleagues were abysmal.... the air-conditioning was faulty, the toilet flusher was broken, the room looked gloomy at night especially because the lights were not bright enough and the wall-to-wall carpet exuded a rather nasty foot odor which means that it hasn't been cleaned for some time. At least my room was decent enough, i guess my roommate and i were one of the lucky ones. My unlucky colleagues however were not allowed to change rooms.... the reason for this was unclear because it was obvious that there were still many unoccupied rooms in the hotel. To top it all off, the elevators/lifts were damn slow..... I mean hair pulling, teeth grinding, eternally slow elevators. You had to allocate at least 10 minutes of your time to wait for the elavators. There were 6 elevators but the funny thing is that they don't all go to all the floors in the hotel. Three of the elevators only went up to the 17th floor and the other 3 went all the way to the roof where the swimming pool was located.

The food in the hotel was weird, especially the breakfast menu. It was tasty but there was no variety. The breakfast menu was really weird.... i mean who in the right mind has the stomach for fish in the morning. Yup they served fish cooked in spicy red sauce to accompany rice in the morning..... yup rice in the morning. WEIRD. Another weird breakfast dish they served was lontong, which is usually served for lunch or dinner, but not in this hotel, yeah, they serve lontong in the morning. WEIRD.They also had nasi lemak, toast but NO CEREAL and NO JUICE. They had coffee and just plain water and NO JUICE. The lunch and dinner menu at the hotel was o.k, no deviation from the normal fare one finds in hotels in malaysia.

I can't tell much about the papers we were examining because it's all really confidential. We even signed a non-disclosure agreement before we started examining the papers. But what i can tell you is that i really spent the whole six days in my hotel room or on the 4th floor where the function rooms were. There just wasn't time to go out. After I checked into my room on the first day, I didn't set foot in the hotel lobby for 4 days. I only set foot in the hotel lobby again on the sixth day which was the last day we were there. But all in all it was really fun because you get to meet other academicians and mingle. The money doesn't hurt either. I examined 112 scripts and they pay us six ringgit per script... so I've made 672 ringgit plus another 200 something ringgit worth of travel expenditure claims for only six days of my time. Now all i have to do is wait for the cheque to come. Wuhooo. I can't wait for the next time, hope i'm able to go.