the week that was

Last week was a real roller coaster ride. Mountains high and oceans deep, it surely was a great great week.

Monday blasted off with the reopening of school, real dark panda eyes, last minute madam chow's homework in the morning and long fish tales about how everyone's holidays went by.

Tuesday was the day I had my AFS interview. Nerve wrecking, heart pumping, adrenaline rushing moments. I wouldn't say it went great but at the same time, I wouldn't wanna say I screwed it up.
I'm glad I made a few friends and discovered a few things about myself.



Wednesday, there was a Missions Camp debriefing session. All of us shared a short testimony and prepared for the upcoming Sunday service where we were to take over. (we as in Missions Camp campers) Supper at wantan mee stall behind church included.

Thursday, ahh. I went to my all time favourite OUG pasar malam with a bunch of schoolmates and took over the assam laksa stall. Loadsa charkueyteow, laksa, chao tau foo and frog fats to eat =) Then it was mamak at Ajimal to watch how Slovakia kicked Italy's butt outta world cup.

Friday itself, Janice came over to do a slideshow on Missions Camp and we played a game of fishies. Then it was a farewell party for a family friend of mine.



By Friday, I was already knocked out.

Saturday itself was another hoo haa.
Went to Ajimal with Josh Choong for Park Ji Sung and got to play with some white rats. Spent some good ol childhood friend moments together by watching the annoying orange and nike ads. and complete our testimonials at 3am =D



On Sunday, I did another first in my life, speak in front of YC. wow.



GREATER THINGS.

as hectic as my life is, I enjoy every moment of it. BECAUSE I like living in the fast lane.
time to 'carpe diem' seize the day!

Myanmar Refugees

This is a continuation of the Mission Camp series.

The campers had a debriefing session recently and we are all supposed to say a testimonial this coming Sunday. *gasp*
This week has truly been a real roller coaster ride for me. High ups and high downs, life is certainly an adventure!

Upon reaching the Lakeview Bungalow (it does have a brown lake view!) near Ringlet, we did the necessary. Unloaded the provisions from the van, stared into the brown lake, chose our bedrooms, got a smack on our faces of what stepping out of our comfort zones meant and ice breakers.

I do like ice breakers! They're fun! However, I just wans't in my A game that time, my brains were fried from all the exhaustion at Singapore.



We then had a short briefing on where we were heading next - a Refugee Camp.

The whole experience there was just a culture shock for me.



We had to carry bags of rice and boxes of vitamins up a steep, muddy pathway. As we reached the end of the first slope, lo and behold, look to the right and here goes another steeeeeep slope.
That was a full body workout equivalent to a full day at the gym I tell yah! (not like I've been to a gym anyway)

We took a tour around the area and spotted a beautiful view. Hence why Aunty Cynthia dubbed this journey as "THE VIEW".



We also got to take a look at the buildings and got to know more about the life of the refugees there. They live in simple houses supported with wooden structures. They have the perfect characteristics of what we call 'kampung people'.



This my friends, is what you call a hole in the ground. and I am proud to say that I've peed in that hole. Unlike all you city kids, never pee in a hole before =D How does it feel like to pee into a hole? Smelly.
Its good training for pee accuracy anyway. Boys and girls alike should definitely pee in a hole.



Everyone gathered and sang songs and Pastor Hock Cheng shared the word with them.
It was really hard to get the message across to the refugees. We didn’t know their Myanmar language and they could only understand a little bit of Malay.



One of the refugees shared his story about how he came to Malaysia. A group of 20 or so refugees were squashed into a small car for a day. They had no food and more importantly, no air to breathe as the it was jam packed. During the journey, people die and they would just throw their bodies out of the car. The women and the kids had it worst; they had to fight with the men.



Check that dude out! He came in a coat just to see us! Talk about being excited!



To hear such a story first hand from the guy who experienced it himself, it's really much much much more impactful.

Well, it's only the first day and I'm already glad I signed up for the camp.

AFS Interview

Here's the deal,
I applied for a student exchange program to study at USA for 6 months through American Field Service (AFS). It was on scholarship and as soon as I got back from Missions Camp, I got a letter informing me about an interview.

Frankly speaking, I did try to do some homework aka googling around about previous interviews. Oh boy, little did I know how different the questions could be.

22 June 2010 - the day that could very well change my life.



There were about 20 of us going for the interview. It all started off with some AFS returnees introducing themselves and then it was our turn to introduce ourselves.

I started the ball rolling with
"Good afternoon, my name is Hor Sue Xian and I study at Sri Sempurna. I'm applying for the YES program to USA. A special thing about myself - I like to take pictures and I brought my camera with me"

I was once again the first few to get called for the interview.

It was just the interviewer and you in an empty classroom.
I was scared I tell ya, but you just gotta do what you gotta do. Break a leg.

My interviewer was an Indian woman. I could sense her professionalism from the way she carried herself - her posture and her speech. She started off by reading my application form, my certificates and then a testimonial.

Then, the questions came.

To all you hopeful future AFS interviewees out there who stumbled here while doing your 'homework', remember what you wrote in your application form. Every preference you think can and WILL be used against you. You've only got a few questions to make or break it.

Some other tips include, do some research about Malaysia, not just about who the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin is, or what the capital of Selangor is, know your races well.
Find out everything about them - everything ranging from their food to their festivals and even their 'pantang larangs'. Don't just know what it is about, know it's purpose and its history.

Last but not least, don't even try faking your answers. As smart as you are with all your As in PMR, the interviewer is always smarter.



After being interviewed, it was more games and mingling around.

Don't worry, the people there are as friendly and outgoing as they can be. Chances are, someone might have already came up and talked to you. A really good opportunity to make some new friends.

We were all then asked to do a sketch about Malaysia, how you would portray Malaysia to your host family. We had very, very little time to prepare but like the returnees said "Your not going to say 'I'll come back in an hour with a super demonstration for you' right?"

We all took our turns expressing our actors and actresses within us.
As for me and my team, I thought we could have done better.



The session ended with the AFS returnees sharing their stories while being abroad, about how they had to cope with the life there and how they are all trying to relive their memories by being volunteers.


This is Nilo, one of the AFS returnees, sharing her experiences while she was an ambassador.

Just before all of us left, here's the obligatory group shot.



and because everyone squirmed when someone spoke about GLEE, here's one showing our GLEEKINESS



To all the people that I've met during the whole session, NICE TO MEET YAH!

-----

On a more personal note, I thought I really should have done better than I did during the interview.
The good part is, even if I did not get accepted to be an AFS ambassador, I am truly thankful for this opportunity handed over to me. Like Sue Xian says it, ONCE IN A LIFETIME.
At least I brought home the experience, the relationship and the pictures =)

Happy Birthday Nikole!

To that one girl I met 11 years ago, HAPPY 17th BIRTHDAY!


(Try spotting the real Nikole!)

Thanks for everything =)

-----

Tomorrow, I have the opportunity to change my life forever.

Missions Camp

Missions Camp was certainly an eye opener.



For starters, we had 23 youths and uncles and aunties living in a bungalow of 3 rooms and 3 toilets. Mathematically speaking, there were about 8 people in a room and each toilet had to go through 8 people's worth of bath and dirty businesses. Luckily noone let out a big bad nasty ohyouknowwhat.
Here's the climax; there were RATS.
So the wooden bungalow we stayed in did an excellent job in transferring sounds; from one end to the other end of the house, you'll know when there's a rat, *thump thump thump* AHHHHHHHHHHH *girly scream*.



200 kilometers away from our comfortable homey homes back in KL, the closest we had to technology were the '5 minutes a day FACEBOOK facility courtesy of ainsley's blackberry'. But then again, we were constantly reminded by the uncles and aunties to get off facebook and enjoy the nature. No phones, no computers, no radios, no cards (until we went to buy a pack of cards for rm3 but only used it for 2 games of chortaiti) all we had were each other and plenty of food.



Speaking of food, the food there was great for a camp. Except that one time where I ordered char kuey teow, it came out like brown soya sos soup kuey teow. nasty. Some great wise words from yours truly, "anyone who constantly eats penang kuey teow shall never ever ever order charkueyteow anywhere else."
Oh and that one time where Jared boiled eggs, yeah hmmm it came with tissues =)
The last night was the best though. On top of our dinner rations, we had a BARBEQUE.
We had 'kebabs where most of us were forced to eat capsicums', 'marinated chicken from the Equatorial Hotel Chef', sweet corn, sweet potato and to top it off, MARSHMALLOWS =D Brown on the outside, liquid on the inside just the way Sue Xian likes it. Much better when first tried it.



Other than that, we visited a refugee camp aka THE VIEW, an orang asli kampung aka THE CLIMB *adapted from miley cyrus* and handed out survey forms at Tanah Rata. It's MISSIONS CAMP after all, right? The experiences there deserve a post of itself. COMING SOON.



The sessions there were equally amazing. They were about Our Destiny and the Great Commission and God's Voice and Missions. I can truly say with my heads up high, all of us came outta that camp changed. All of this also COMING SOON.



Photo wise (eh you still remember your on my photo blog rite), there were 3 dslrs, yippee =) Mine, Ainsley's and Janice's. So there will be a fair coverage from everything to everything. Bugs, strawberries, dogs, whatever in your brain you wish to know, my sexy face, yeah all coming right up. If only Ainsley didn't stay in a zoo in Melaka, the pics might take some time, kiddos.



Kesimpulannya, the relationships formed with the people there were like wow. You know in some camps, there would be some sort of a hierarchy thingmajig going on. It might be the number of campers here but everyone came out of the camp as if they knew each other for 10 years. (even though some of us were abit shy shy in the beginning)
Those 96 hours spent with all you crazy people about babies and weddings and toy storys and farts and relationships and grandma moths and bimbos, couldn't have imagined spending it with other people. Bak kata pepatah from yours truly, 'ONCE IN A LIFETIME EXPERIENCE'.



THANKYOOS to Pastor Hock Cheng, Pastor Chok, Pastor Alvin, Pastor Rose, Uncle Steve, Aunty Cynthia, Adrian, Ben Gan, Boon How, Joanna, Ainsley, Ginsky, Dominique, Johann, Chloe, Jared, Winnie, Luke, Clarissa, Adam, Josh and Janice for....

paying your 10 sen =)



Bye i'm off to read my 90 emails. they're mostly facebook junk anyway.

PS: Sorry for making everyone wait for my pee =/ Really cannot tahan until cry already =/

Singapura Dollahs

Singapore was such a bummer.

Instead of visiting Universal Studios or other tourist attractions, we spent a load of time at the police station. WHY? Because we lost our AutoCard.
As if it wasn't embarrassing enough, the policeman said, "It's the first time we encountered such a problem". Now you know why Malaysia is technologically behind them, its because of Malaysians like us losing cards =)

To top it off, we only got half the amount of shopping vouchers that came with the hotel room.



On the brighter side, I shopped the famous Orchard Road, bringing home some awesome goodies =)

Got myself a Mighty Wallet, darn coooooool. Made out of paper, boasting about how it can't be torn and how waterproof it is.


Other stuff such as a bag, perfume yada yada....

One thing about shopping in Singapore. THE CURRENCY EXCHANGE WILL DEFINITELY BURN YOUR POCKETS FASTER THAN YOU CAN CALCULATE HOW MUCH IT IS IN MYR (1 Sing dollar to 2.3 Ringgit).
A rip off I say. Things there are almost the same price as the ones in Malaysia, unconverted.

The plus side is they have loadsa items you will never find in Malaysia.

I bumped into this extremely cool orange watch, like ohmigoshness. 195SGD. Heck im not spending 450 ringgit on a watch!



Shopping aside, we visited the new Marina Bay Sands Hotel & Casino and spent 8 dollars on parking fee. A whopping RM18.40 for 2 hours of car space.



So now my family is broke and I can't get the Sigma lens I want. BOOOOOOOOOOO.

*don't expect singapore pictures because I came home with 24 photos. rawr!

Bye I'm off to Cameron Highlands for Missions Camp =)

Student Council

Just a quickie before I leave to the land of merlions in approximately 7 hours.

For the past month or so, I've been busy sticking my hands into various school projects. It's been getting rather messy, I tell ya. From sports day till mid year exams, very messy. So much so till I have been neglecting my poor 500D, chucked in a corner of my computer table collecting dust (hopefully not fungus). I had a secret invisible item on my Holiday TO-DO list : touch my camera.

I didn't have the opportunity though. Just wasn't at the right place at the right time. I mean, what possibly can you capture at a cyber cafe. whoops.

So here goes my (lame) attempt at touching my camera during the holidays.

Student Council Leaders Training sort of thingay. (yes, another project i stuck my dirty hands into)

The only part I thought that was worth photographing was this little science project we had. Given a whole loadda straws and a few rubber bands, we had to create this enclosure around an egg. After that, we're supposed to drop our 'masterpiece' down 1 storey and cross your fingers the egg doesn't crack and spill its guts out.


My sexy teammates. Emilay // Brandon // David.
Check out our "NEST"


Emily and Yen Ni's "scarecrow"


Marcus' "submarine"


Let's just say our egg cracked the least =) our great piece of crap called the NEST brought us victory. Shows how every mushroom cloud has a silver lining =D


The much needed new objective of Student Council.

As for me, I'm quite happy that Student Council has a revamp. Like seriously, isn't it time??
Though some things remain unchanged, well baby steps are better than nothing ay.

inspiration

today's photo of the day:

total cliché, with that é
i am in serious need of inspiration.

OH THANK GOODNESS im going on a holiday. singapore babayy.
i should try newater, uhhh so how many people have shitted in that water again?

photoshop CS5

totally blows me away. BLOWS.







FULLSTOP.

its JUNE already! after 6 long months of some really nasty arse kickin business, this 2 weeks of holiday is sure to be BIGGERBETTERFUNNER.
the bad news is, i figured out that i only have 5 more months or so to wake up and see my best pals from monday to friday, five days a week in school. as always, we won't be seventeen forever.

on a lighter note, i feel very the productive lately.
not quite so but i manage to cut my hair after ranting about how fluffy it is for the past few weeks.
and i made a video, yay.
and my orange wall project failed.

so i'm off to the neighborhood cc to dip my head in a pond full of zombies.
goodnight and goodbye.

Happy Teacher's Day

Well, first of all a very happy teachers' day to all you teachers out there (because teachers stalk my blog too) =D

A little movie project me and roy decided to embark on.



Little did we know, a chain of UNFORTUNATE events came along.

Roy's laptop with our almost finished work decided to PHAIL on us a day before teachers day. That already took us 7 long gruelling hours of post processing.

Here's the good part.
We had to RESTART the whole project from nothingness. The best part? NONE of the computers in my house were made for video editing work, programs were crashing and we constantly had to continue from where our last save was.
Working on Windows and Mac simultaneously is a big pain in the butt. The programs couldn't read each other's formats.
The climax: We couldn't RENDER the movie because the file was too big.
So we had to cut the movie up to about 50%. joy.



In the end, I just hope that this story inspires you enough to go do something good to your teachers because I think they did more for us.

Q: So Sue Xian, how many hours did you sleep last night?
A: Oh, thirty minutes more or less.
Explains why I was being such a dorkhead today.

For now, I'll just stick to what i know and love best - PHOTOSHOP.