Taking the Skies

Krispy Kreme Onboard AirAsia

Today’s such a great day. We launched Krispy Kreme onboard AirAsia, the first collaboration of its kind in the world! Amazing. After the press conference I was talking to some journalists and they asked “How do you guys do it?”. I laughed and said “Just need to work harder lah,”. The phone has been ringing ever since. Everyone wants to know what is this interesting new department called “Ancillary Income”. What an abundance of good luck and good fortune. Here I was wondering how to get people to buy more ancillary products, and then comes an opportunity like Krispy Kreme aboard AirAsia that just, literally, kicked the door open for me to explain who we are and what we do.

Really. Work here is intense and relentless. But it is like paying me to eat doughnuts. Ask for a box when you are flying AirAsia ok!

Dato' Francis Lee, Executive Director of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Sdn Bhd, Dato' Sri Tony Fernandes, Group CEO of AirAsia Berhad and Dato' Robin Tan Yeong Ching, CEO of Berjaya Corporation Berhad posed together with AirAsia's cabin crew at the launch today.

7 Random Travel Moments

Random photos from my thumb drive that I am cleaning out. You will notice that despite its randomness, everything centered on food or the search for food.

See if you can tell where the first one was taken:

Saying goodbye to the Laguna Resort & Spa, Nusa Dua, Bali after coffee and cakes and butter biscuits on its pristine private beach.

A night under the stars enjoying Cup C's and molten chocolate cakes at Spring Summer in Bangkok with a bunch of my favourite people.

3 Malaysians in Frankfurt -- I was looking for things to eat when I heard people talking in Bahasa Malaysia. Turned out there is a Chinese coffeeshop in the middle of Frankfurt's town square run by Malaysians so I ended up having fried rice and teh tarik. Frankfurt is special because it was the city where I discovered Murakami. It was one of those lonely evenings when I was having dinner and only had a book for company. How lucky was I that the only Eng book that I could find in the little bookstore at the town square was Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore".

I was only interested in the word "EAT". This was near Tower of London where I ate a whole box of Millie's Cookies while walking from the subway to the Tower.

Waiting for my lunch, a local dish called GUDEG, to be served at Jogjakarta. I forgot the name of this stall but it is a famous one. Ibu Wita even packed some Gudeg to bring back to Jakarta for hubby.

Having dinner at the Divisoria night market in Manila. I had snails and grilled seafood, followed by ox tongue on hotplate the next night when the boys took me bar-karaoke-hopping. On my last night, I had army chow while pretending poorly to be an insurgent at the War Game. Randy must have regretted putting the Malaysian girl with the visible, red shoes in his team.

My (Unnecessary) Travel Essentials

There are a few things that I deem essential to my survival. A constant supply of cookies for instance, a fully-charged ipod and my oversized sunglasses.  Aldo, Promod and MNG have some really cheap and really cool sunglasses.  Accidentally sat on one? No problem. Just throw it out and buy another.

When I travel, I am obsessed about making sure that certain essentials are packed. Some of these essentials are completely unnecessary but I buy and shove them into the suitcase anyway. These are, in no particular order:

1. A full set of bathroom stuff: shower gel, shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, body moisturiser and loofah. Why? I have no idea. And the stranger thing is, I never take those little miniatures that they give away for free. The only time I did was when I stayed in one of the Sheratons. The minatures were Bvlgari, well, I mean, I don’t use shower gels in tiny little bottles that I can’t open but when they are Bvlgari, you shouldn’t think twice, no?
2. A new set of facial care: I  buy miniature facial care sets or trial kits like they are going out of business. If I forget, I make a huge deal out of  buying one at the airport. This has nothing to do with the 100ml liquid rule. For some reason, in my mind, travelling = new facial care routine. So I have many corpses of tiny, clear plastic pouches of various facial care trial sets in the bottom drawer of my dresser. That’s where I keep the unfinished, unused little bottles, all nicely hidden in the dark in the facial care tomb. The next time I travel, I buy a new set.
3. Disposable underwear: can’t leave or live without them.
4. A stash of meds that would make Adrian Monk proud: Zyrtec, Panadol, Aspirin, Ponstan, charcoal tablets, efferverscent salt, Motilium, Actal, Vicks Vaporub, Yoko Yoko analgesic liquid, Mentholatum Ice Gels (for the eventual migraine after being out in the sun too much), antacids and an assortment of band-aids in different shapes and sizes.
5. At least 3 pair of shoes, even when I am only travelling for the weekend.

What are yours?

Travel Wishlist

I am starting this blog with my Top 10 Travel Wishlist. Some of these places I have visited before but I want to go there again and re-live the experience. In no particular order:

1. Catch a concert at the Tokyo Dome, Japan. Whatever concert. I just want to be in the place. I’ve watched so many concert DVDs filmed at the Dome it’s a flaming shame if I don’t get to experience it at least once.

2. Go to E for All (Entertainment for All Expo) in LA, the sort-of successort to the previously open-for-all E3, take lots of pictures with as many Booth Babes (yes, it’s a noun) as I could humanly manage and make all the fanboys weep with envy.

3. Blow a month’s worth of salary eating at Djemaa El-Fna, Marrakech. Yes, food occupies a very large portion of my brain.

4. Spend a totally hedonistic, self-gratifying (not in a perverse kind on way so take your mind out of the gutter), pleasure-seeking weekend at the Glastonbury Festival.

5. Stay up quietly til dawn to watch an Aurora Borealis over the skies of Alaska.

6. Swim in the impossibly blue waters of Mauritius without caring about how fat I look in a bikini. DO NOT use your imagination.

7. Explore and discover  Europe aboard the opulent and luxurious Orient Express. Sneaking off to the train’s roof to have afternoon tea is optional. I will be broke for the next 5 years after this trip but I will deal with that when it happens. Live in the moment, yes?

8. Put on my spectacles, look intelligent and hobnob with people who make a living out of writing at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali. Then, watch the sunset at Nusa Dua with a cup of local coffee and a few slices of sponge cake (I cannot decide how many slices are too many).

9. Appease the wild and (sometimes) out-of-control-if-not-paid-attention-to shopping beast in me in Hong Kong, then trick  Snow White at Disneyland HK to speak to me in Chinese to confuse the children.

…and 10) I can’t decide on a 10. Suggest any?

UPDATE:

Thanks Ibu Wita for suggesting the 10th destination.

10.  Take one of the passengers ships from ‘Hurtigruten’ and sail amongst the fjords, almost to the Russian water and experience the midnight sun.