What a perfect weekend it was!

And I'm referring to the weekend of October 20 and 21.

1. It was success all around at the Malaysian 24 Hour Comics Day. My friends who organised the event managed to get a full house participation. I finished my 24 pages of comic.
2. Kimi Raikkonen and his Ferrari team provided a most perfect ending to this year's F1 season.

I was previously a McLaren supporter but I switched camps this year. I had been supporting them so many years but with the exception of Hakkinen's world title some time ago, it was to no avail.

Interestingly, just as I swore allegiance to my new team, McLaren improved a lot this year. They had arguably the most reliable car on the grid. They had two of the most talented drivers working for them. They gave both these drivers equal treatment...

and that last bit proved to be their undoing. You can't let teammates fight it out. There has to be a bit of team order. Alonso should have been given preferrential treatment. He came to McLaren having done a swell job at Renault. He deserves some respect.

In the end, McLaren got nothing.

Come to think of it, maybe I was more of a driver supporter. First it was Hakkinen and when he left, Kimi came in just in time to fill the void. So when Kimi switched to Ferrari, I switched accordingly.

All in all, the manner in which Kimi won the championship -- leapfrogging the top two contenders at the very last GP -- is stuff legends are made of. This year's championship will be remembered for a very long time.


Participants at the Malaysian 24 Hour Comics Day, as seen from the third floor of Cineleisure Damansara. There are two empty seats in the picture. Can you guess which one is mine?

This year's 24 Hour Comics Day was held at the concourse area of Cineleisure so Cedric and Wong were able to seat us in a circle to form a clock. And the clock 'ticked' every hour from 1 to 24. It was cute and clever at the same time. I'll bet this was something they had dreamt of doing for quite some time!

I went into the challenge with basically the same strategy as last year's: go with an empty mind. No character, no story, no plan whatsoever. Just my pen and a stack of blank paper.

If I could do it last year, I could do it again this year. So I thought.

But I (made the mistake of picking) a subject that I was not familiar with: punctuality. Because of that, I lost the first two hours trying to create a character and to piece together a story out of thin air.

Dinner time came and by then, I was doubtful whether I would be able to finish this year’s 24 hour comic. I had done basically 4 pages, had a character called Punktual Punk, but apart from those, nothing much to show for.

It was pretty scary.

At that point of time however, I realised it was still within me to decide whether I could finish this challenge or not. I decided that yes, I would go all out to finish this year's challenge.

As with many things in life, it takes a decision to finish a 24 hour comic.

It helped that somebody bought me coffee just before midnight (you know who you are!) because after that coffee, everything became clear as to what I had to do. :)

In the end, I got my 24 pages. I wasn't happy with my story (it will not win the Pulitzer prize) but I achieved what I had set out to do.

Here's what I came up with at the event.