It's official, Michael Carrick has been unveiled as Manchester United's big name signing of the summer. Not as popular as perhaps Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard or even Michael Ballack, this is a player who has vast experience having won a cap for England at the age of 20. Fast, decisive and tough tackling, Carrick was the ideal player Sir Alex Ferguson was hoping for, having missed out on Michael Ballack to Chelsea, and Michael Essien the season before that. Ironic they all have "Michael" as
their first names.
The signing of this courageous holding midfielder was never easy though, as Man U has a 10 million pound offer rejected initially. With a hefty asking price of 17 million pounds, Man Utd had to sell to get their man. The player sacrificed was Dutch forward Ruud van Nistelrooy, who was sold to Real Madrid for 10 million pounds. Quite a deal for Man Utd as he was already 30 years old.
It wasn't over though. According to reports, Michael Carrick had refused to sign a new contract with the North Londeners and prompted Spurs to sell the former West Ham United trainee before leaving on a free transfer. Finally, a deal was proposed and accepted by both sides. Although the fee was undisclosed, it is believed the fee was in the region of 14 million pounds. Michael Carrick is now officially a Manchester United player!!

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Name: Michael Carrick
Date of birth: 28 July 1981
Height: 182 cm
Weight: 74 kg
Position: Midfielder
Current Club: Manchester United (ENG)
Former Clubs: West Ham United (ENG), Tottenham
First Int'l Cap: England v. Mexico (25-May-2001)
Int'l Caps: 7 (as of 1-Jul-2006)

uhm..16th July, 2 days after my highly controversial birthday and the day where my friends gathered at KL for an outing. Why KL you ask? Was it the malls? No. Was it the whorehouses? No. uhm... definitely No. Reason, to have a good dinner at a high-class restaurant. A total of 21 people were invited, only 17 can make it. Still not bad though.

There were 2 groups on that day. 1 left at 12pm to eat Bak Kut Teh at KL. Considering the price, didn't seem worth it. the 2nd batch left at 2.30 pm to meet the first batch there. I, mind i stress out, was in the 2nd batch. So, having bought the tickets at the train station behind Carrefour, we waited for the train to come. Little did we know that Simon eventually did decide to join us, although he was feeling "under the weather" the day before. So, off we went. KL, here we come.

Whilst meeting the first batch at Sungei Wang Plaza , I was given a wrapped gift. Happy i was most definitely as it was kinda unexpected. We then decided to go to Berjaya Times Square to watch a movie. Having walked around in there, 3 cannot-be-named guys, decided to leave the group and go themselves. Fine then. Upon reaching the cinema, we realised the movies showed didn't go well with our timing. So, the next idea was the Theme Park in Berjaya. Well, some people felt that it was not worth the money considering how much time we could actually spend in there. Fair enough. So, walking around, the girls wanted to do window shopping, totally against the guys' idea of having fun. Having debated constantly, it lead us to nowhere and all we did was took some photos and walked around. Minutes later, another girl finally arrived and we met her at the Berjaya Times Square entrance.

After leaving the shopping centre, one of the girls in the group suffered cramp. Rather unfortunate indeed. Though offered piggybacks, she "hesitantly" turned down the offer. Wandering around, we decided to go to the bowling alley opposite Federal Hotel. Sounds fun, right? well, it should've. But as you know, nothing ever happens as planned as the bowling alley was closed. Bloody KL, things were just going downhill. We decided to enter Low Yat Plaza instead. As you know, Low Yat Plaza is a crappy shopping centre meant only for electronics. The only good thing about the place is I got to buy my Sony Ericsson headsets at a cheaper price than usual. Upon leaving the complex, I received another gift by 2 of the girls and I was told not to open it until after dinner.

We arrived at El Cerdo at 6.30 pm. We were greeted by the chef, whom i had known for quite some time now. Finally, dinner was served. Before eating, i had to give a speech about today. Speech was literally just 85 seconds long. Not bad for an impromtu speech, if I do say so myself.

After a really good dinner, jerk-of-the-lot decided to give his toast. It went something like "16 years and 2 days ago, in a wet, stormy night..."(use your imagination) He was then accompanied by another guy as well. ah...speeches, never good coming from these 2 guys. Later, the gifts were finally opened. One was a "PLAYBOY" necklace, cool. the other was a "plasma-sphere". It's hard to explain what it is. Really cool gift as well.

After dinner, we bidded fairwell to the chef and took a group photo. At the end of the day, a great ending to an otherwise entertainment-lacking day. We arrived back at Subang at precisely 10.05pm. After the goodbye's and stuff, we all left 1 by 1 in a rather energy-drained but yet happy fashion.

finally! got this freakin blog started, due to the persuasion of mr. Eric Wong and Miss Nurul Fatin, who both agreed that friendster blog sucks. Fair enough. So, here i am writin my new blog on blogger instead. Should be fun...