My Car and I

Isn't she beautiful?? This is my car. MY car!

Omg, its like a dream come true; I have my very own freakin car!

Ever since I was 14, I've always wanted to own a car. To be independent when it comes to transport. No longer will I have the need to disturb my parents by calling them or waking them up to send me to places! This is the life.

If you knew me long enough, you would've known that my dream car is a Mini Cooper S. It still is!

But I've gotta be realistic here. There's no way a student like me could possibly afford such an expensive car and I doubt that my parents are willing to pay such a high price when I only need a mode of transport.

So when I'm out in the working world and become a successful businesswoman or something like that, you can be sure to find me driving that gorgeous car someday...

But in the meantime, my current baby is this second hand Myvi of 4 years. She may not be brand new, but she's great to drive around compared to the AD Resort (which is a manual gear. btw).

This may not be my previous car, but that's exactly what my old car looked like. Although I passed the driving test using a manual car, I'm still pretty lousy at it.

Just as soon as I thought I've finally gotten used to driving a manual gear, the car just DIED when I was turning past the guard house. The road in front was clear, the car waiting at the back of me was clearly annoyed, and the guard was watching me. Oh the pressure!

I started the car again. Not even a second later, it died again! And I'm like, 'OK, I'm really freakin out here!'

So I started the engine once again, and it SHOT across the road, nearly colliding with the car driving in front of me. I quickly swerved to the side, hitting the curb and the other car managed to move away just in time, while honking at me.

That was the scariest moment of my life, I nearly cried...

After telling my dad what happened, he was like, 'That's it. We're getting you an automatic car.'

YES!!!

So the AD Resort was sold away and I gotta admit, I'm kinda sad to see it go because I've known that car all my life. I practically grew up with it! I've slept in it as a baby, I've traveled in it, I nearly caused an accident with it...

We've shared loads of memories together.

But anyway, I guess its about time to let it go. After all, my new baby is a lot easier to drive and I'm a lot more confident in driving to places now. Recently, I even managed to drive all the way to church by myself and there was no accidents, no complications, nothing! It was a completely smooth journey!

Plus, the car is pretty spacious, the seats are comfortable, there's no clutch, no 1st gear, 2nd gear nonsense, just drive, reverse, or park. Its like driving a bumper car!

Oh, and for all my readers' information, I won't be blogging as frequently as I usually do because of the extremely important SPM trials and I need the time to study the crap out of me. I hope you understand and wish me luck!

The BIG One

I know its kinda late, but as promised, here's my experience of being part of the BIG One video workshop.

Our first day started off with introductions and games. Such as what I call the 'musical cups' above where everybody has to be in sync with each other so that it'll sound awesome.

I couldn't forget the 'seeing through your ears' activities where we were blindfolded and led round the farm by the facilitators bare foot!

Credits of this photo goes to YNN

So... yeah, we went down the hot steps of staircases, walked over sharp pebbles, past soft grass, and onto ice cold water which someone has obviously poured onto our pathway. It was a totally different experience and we learnt that we had to transmit those feeling to our audience when they see our videos.

The next day starts off with making your own breakfast because I think the uncle prefers to sleep late so he gonna be like, 'Here's your frying pan, here's the stove, and here's the egg. Now leave me alone.' *goes back to sleep*

Its probably the only time where people actually get to show off their cooking skills. Some pro's are even kind enough to take other people's order and have that slight chance to ruin their breakfast. If they wanted to.

I'm definitely no cook. So I took nobody's order and made my own crappy breakfast. I made a sunny side up with ham sandwich. And it didn't burn! YAY ME!!

Alright, so everybody has been split up into 3 groups. Each group were assigned to create a video which relates to the Farm. For my group, we were sent to Lenggeng Town which is not too far away from the Farm while the others had to film there. So we get to escape from the Farm.

Everybody in the group played a different role. I was the editor together with Marcuse. Though I'm not sure if I was very much help cuz for some reason, I felt really, really tired. Don't ask me why.


It was a wonderful experience to harass some random person on the streets so that they can be in our video XD

As the editors, Marcuse and I were pretty free while they were filming. Look how busy everybody else were...



Guess what? While everybody else were interviewing an old man in a shop, Miera, Marcuse and I found this uncle and we thought we'd interview him as well. Turns out that we weren't in Lenggeng Town the whole time and we went the opposite way!

So the kind uncle drew a map for us, gave us some directions, told us the places of interest, and off we go!


By the time we've reached Lenggeng Town, it was raining cats and dogs! So we couldn't go far because of the rain and walked down the shophouses.

And thank our lucky stars, we have found someone who could actually speak english! Finally!!


Yes, we found this aunty who spent her childhood in lenggeng and she can speak plain English. At last! All day, we were looking for someone to interview, but most of the people either refused to be on camera or we couldn't understand each other because we speak different languages.

Plus, we were even allowed to take a look up their old shophouse. All I can say about that place is that it was the darkest and dustiest room I've ever been in.

Can you see the dust floating about in the air???

We even had the priveledge to talk to the state deputy of the place and it was amazing luck as well because he was born and raised in that place, so he is bound to know a lot about Lenggeng.

And now, a group photo with our mentor, Joe on the right. She's awesome with the cameras.


And there was the Post-production. Which means its the editor's job to edit the videos. Arrgh! Being an editor is such a pain. No wonder why they get paid so much! Its hard work looking through hundreds of clips to choose from and squeeze them all into less than 5 minutes!

Its not easy finding out the right time to cut the videos, its not easy to put them all in the right sequence, and its ESPECIALLY not easy to do subtitles! Omg, how do these people do it? You have to translate every single word and type them all out and we had only a day to complete this video.

Marcuse is great with the computers because I really have no idea how to work out the programme and I keep dropping off once in a while. So he did most of the work. Sorry Marcuse, I wasn't much help.

Honestly, I felt like the Ringo Starr of the group...

Anyway, after many waking hours of editing the video, here is the outcome..

Yeah... we didn't do the subtitles because we didn't have enough time to do that... But basically, he's talking about the good stuff about the place. Nothing too mind blowing about that...

But check out the other group's videos. They're pretty awesome. :)




Paradise in a Farm describes the many joys you find in there. Get close to nature and enjoy the activities it has to offer!



Fresh from the Farm is all about the scrumptious food you can find in the Farm. In this video, Alyna will show you how to make a delicious meal using all the ingredients from the Farm.

After watching all the videos, I have to point out that all the hosts of the videos sounded very stiff and nervous. But who am I to judge? I'm not the host and even if I were, I'd probably be nervous myself. So they did a good job for an amateur, right?

And so, our journey ends here. We had a blast coming for this workshop and I have definitely learnt a lot about video production now.

Lets take a look at some of the people's thoughts during the workshop...


Some of my favorites were...

The Farm

When I first received a message on Facebook about a video workshop from Lisan, who is from The Star newspaper, I thought it was a spam because most letters I receive are from my e-mail inbox itself.

Nontheless, I checked out their website, Switchup.tv. And I decided to go for the 3D 2N workshop. Best decision ever!

Our workshop was held at 'The Farm' in Negeri Sembilan. If you're looking for a quiet place to hold retreats, camps, and other events, this is the place to go.

Lets take a tour round the farm, shall we?

The Farm is run by Uncle Andrew who lives there and takes care of all the animals and plants. Yes, it is a REAL farm. Not like some crappy place where they have only a tiny chicken coop and call it a 'farm'.


I really like this place as well as the Uncle here because he even lets us go fishing by his pond and gave us some sticks, strings, and hook!

Yes, its not exactly one of the best equipments you could possibly use to catch a fish, but with a bit of bread as a bait, we could actually catch fish! I couldn't believe it! It was so easy to catch a fish there because either there's too many fishes in the pond, or the fishes there are plain stupid.

Heck, I caught 3 fishes and that's already considered as a lot of fish to me because whenever I go fishing with a PROPER fishing rod and use SQUID as bait, I'd usually catch at most 2 or none at all. But this time, I only used a stick, some string and a piece of bread as bait and I already caught 3 fishes within the first hour!

I laugh whenever a noob fisher actually catches a fish for the first time and freaks out because he/she didn't know how to take the hook out of the fish while its flapping about on the ground helplessly.

That's why it REALLY freaked the girls out when I felt a tug from my string and yanked it out of the water in a split second while the flapping fish lands right next to their feet. HAHAHA!!!

You should've seen the look on their faces when they saw how I removed the hook from the fish. Whenever I unhook a living fish, I'd put it on the ground, step on it so that it can't move and I just remove the hook from its mouth. Simple as that.

But I think the girls almost went faint when I stepped on the fish.





The Farm is also the home to many of our furry friends around the place. Aww... look at the little rabbit. Isn't it cute?

AAAWWWWW........ it makes me wanna snuggle them too!!

In the morning, the roosters won't shut up and keeps crowing till we wake up!



So to take revenge upon them, we had to eat their wives/hens! MUAHAHAHAHA!!!!

OK, that sounds messed up. But its true, all the meat that we had throughout the entire camp came straight from this very farm. That means the chicken were freshly slaughtered and the fish were caught straight from the pond! Pretty cool, huh?

I even recognize some of the fruits served from the fruit trees I saw in the area like the guavas!

Although we were surrounded by plenty of nice and healthy fruit trees, guests are strictly forbidden to pluck any fruits because it will damage the trees if everybody does that. So if you really wanna pluck any fruits, its probably best to get Uncle Andrew's permission first.




I've never seen so many jackfruits all my life!


This proves that I'm definitely no Kampung girl. I had no idea that baby jackfruits LOOKED like that.



This is a Dragonfruit plant. You can see why its named after a dragon because of its 'spiky' skin. It turns a hot pink once its ripe and ready to eat. Its a pretty AND yummy fruit, mind you.



A funny story about Durians; I've been eating durians all my life and I've never seen a Durian tree before. Since I've heard that The Farm has plenty of Durian trees around and we are allowed to pick up the Durians we find on the ground, I wandered about the ENTIRE place looking for just ONE Durian tree.

You know what was the dumbest part?

After much searching, looking up at all the tall trees I see while sweating bullets, I found a durian on the floor so I looked at the tree next to it. It then dawned upon me that I was surrounded by Durian trees the whole time and there I was going around all those Durian trees like an idiot wondering when would I ever find one =.=

Nom noming on Durians! Yumm.....

We even found a ball so we played Captain Ball!



Because The Farm isn't located near a busy town or anything, its a great place to go Star-gazing. Just remember to bring mosquito repellent if you plan to do so though. Otherwise, you'll be eaten alive rather than 'watch the stars'.




From the Dormitory, you get a good view of the place; from the garden to the pond!






The dormitory is big enough to fit about 15 people... I think. It may not be air conditioned, but I can guarantee that its pretty cold at night. Trust me, I'm the kind of person who loves the cold and I thought it was gonna be warm at night. So, I only wore shorts and a t-shirt and man, was it cold! Especially when it was raining!

You only need to put the fan at low power just to keep the air ventilation. Other than that, it will be cold enough to doze off at night.



In the dormitory, I found this switch that said 'NO TOUCHY'. I wonder what does it do...

Oh yeah, I'll be sure to blog about our videography workshop on my next post so don't forget to drop by soon!

In the meantime, lets find out what does this button do...

....................................

David Archuletta's CRAZY Fan

Isn't he wonderful??

I've always supported David Archuleta ever since he first appeared on American Idol. That's why I was kinda pissed that David Cook won instead of him. When I first heard the results, I was like 'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!'

But anyway, as soon as my friends and I heard about David Archuleta coming to Malaysia for his Concert, we bought the tickets straightaway!

And so, to make sure I got a good view of him, I wore the highest wedge sandals I own (which is about 3 inches tall). What I didn't know was that we were gonna walk all the way from China town to the stadium which is about a 10 minute walk XP

By the time we got there, I was sweating like a pig and my feet began to hurt. Plus, we were waiting at the stadium from 6 to 8. That's like 2 hours we've been waiting out there. We left at 4pm and the concerts starts at 8pm. Until now, I still don't understand why did we have to go 4 hours early...

So we finally got our seats and what a coincidence! We met WenXin right next to us! We met her at the environmental camp in Genting last year. You can read all about our trip here.

Finally! I saw David Archuleta as super cute as ever! In the flesh. RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES!!! EEEEeeeeeKKKK!!!!!!

Yes, I may not look it, but I was capable to scream continuosly for at least 30 seconds until my friends had to turn and stare at me XD

When David sang, 'Stand by Me', he was like, 'Won't you stand... stand by me?' and I was like, 'YES I WILL STAND BY YOU, DAVID!!!'

OMG... even his sweat is adorable! Can I... can I kiss it???

I'm soo hating those people I met recently who even took a PICTURE with him!! OOHHH the frustration!!

But for his sake, maybe its a good thing we never met because if we ever had to come in contact, I would have a super glue ready with me and I would apply it to my hands, ask him to give me a Hi-5 and... we'll be together.... FOREVER....

Look how excited they are! Come to think of it, I think 90% of the audience that day were all females. The only guys who came were either the boyfriends of the female fans or their kid brothers. Basically, the girls are probably the ones that dragged the boys to the concert. The only guys that came by themselves were VERY few...

So yeah, I had a blast coming to David Archuleta's concert that Tuesday night! If only I actually got to meet him, it would make it the PERFECT night of my life.

Just you wait, Archuleta. We shall meet again...