Phuket-ed

As some of you might know, my family finally went to other country for the very first time as a family holiday. Which reminds me that our previous trip was to Penang 4 years ago.

Me and sis actually snapped over 400+ pics in total. Don't blame us, technically we're tourist there k. Instead of posting the nice ones (bout 20+), so-so ones (50+), horrible ones (100+) here or any other hosting sites, I've decided to compile everythin and make it into a slideshow.

After a whooping 16 hours effort spent, finally I've done the slideshow! *pat myself on the head*
Of course its throughout 2 weeks.

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We stayed in Patong Beach area, prime area if you asked me. Basically there's nothin much except the night life and the beach.
The ultimate hot spot would be the Bangla Road (I laughed when I saw a motel named Bangla Bungalow). It's bout 2 streets down from the resort we're stayin.
Loads of bar gals and foreigners/guai lo.

Particularly for this street:
If its a darn pretty gal, she's a dude.
If its a gal, most likely she works for those bar.
If its a a bar gal, it would be an ugly one.
If she's alone, she's out to promote the bar or herself.
If she's together with a guy, its definitely an old dude no younger than 50.
If you're a guy walking alone in the street, you'll get grabbed and harassed by the gals.

I'm serious, the ugliest gals are found working in those bars and clubs. The prettier ones are found working as waitress, receptionist, restaurant etc etc. Kinda reverse back here.

Everyone been asking bout those 'lady-boys'. They have perfect features and tall as hell. There's one night, there's this group of cabaret 'dudes' dressed in erm...fancy and revealing clothes. I thought it would be an interesting pic until i heard they asking people around "Sir, you wanna take picture?"

Yes, I would need to pay them if I wanna show u all the closeup pics of them.

Then there's the Rock City. Kinda like Hard Rock Cafe, but the bands are somewhat good. There's this band with a tomboyish lead singer who sings Evanescence's song in perfect pitch as well as the Guns N' Roses' cover/tribute band who is late and dressed horribly.

Apparently, half of the people there thought we're Japanese. Lol.
There's this day when we're taking the one day trip to Phi Phi island and they came to pick us up from the hotel with a van. There's already a few australians in the van. As soon as we hopped into the van, they said loudly "Arigato! Good morning!"

It was fun to have Australians saying a jap thank you to a bunch of Chinese people :D

Basically most of the places are shown in the slideshow except the massage. It was great :) except the part where they bent my body like hell.

So in a nutshell, it's an over-commercialised tourist location. Things are rather pricey (kinda same as KL prices), nice beach with fine sand, Phi Phi Island still losing to Malaysia's beaches and islands, and nice food (if you can identify the nice dishes).

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Enjoy!

Green Fest 2008

To be honest, I have no idea what's the name of the event. Some said Green Day (woohoo!), some said greenfest and some said The Star Environmental something something day which i considered it too long.

Do you have a favourite sleeping environment? Like a comfy bed with dim lightings and such.
For me, as long its a heavy raining weather, even sleeping on crooked tree stump will be fine. IT HAPPENED AT 6AM WHEN I NEEDED TO GET MY BUTT UP AND TO BUKIT KIARA.



That's probably the ultimate bummer for the entire day, thinking i should get there earlier as there are joggers who crowd the place even as early as 5-6. What do you know, its still raining when i arrived. Except that i still see joggers when i'm there! Seeing various age group people all holding their umbrellas and starting to jog.

Let see, bout the station for the BRATs/P2P, i think it was the biggest and best location among all the other stations.
Guess what, the crowd was rather poor on that day, compared to last year's at FRIM. Probably cause FRIM its quite a cramped up place and everyone will surely pass by all the stations. Unlike this where places are all scattered around.



Ever got harrassed by those credit card guys at shopping malls? Dying and begging u to sign up for their credit card promotions? I was one of them during the greenfest. Practically hogging and blocking the road so that people will enter our station (thats why, who ask to get such big ass station)

Let see, there are few things set up at the station.

If you see a whole group of people sitted in a circle, inflating and creating somethin out of those slim but long balloons. Those are the production team for the balloon selling. They worked like in some China factory filled with overwork and underpaid laborers. Coz they seemed so tensed up making it. Well...Phui Yee seemed to be so proud of her achievements of being able to make a more 'complex' shape one after another :)

Then there's this facepainting booth (or a table filled with brushes and watercolour). Somehow I ended up helping here. My job was to get experimented on my arm with weird drawings no one else could figure and walk around outside hopefully to pull a few customers in.
I was asked to shout "Facepainting for 2 Ringgit!", but somehow i don't feel right doing that. For someone not having a single drop of paint on his face but everything on his arm.

Finally there's the P2P booth. Its quite nice to see our tshirt designs from last years' p2p get printed out and to be sold. There's coasters, ringtones and reusable chopsticks. Yes, THOSE reusable chopsticks that you all love to poke fun at me.

Oh yeah, then the P2P came up with sketch as well. Its quite funny when they resemble their sketch like a routined show. Remember how the dolphin shows get announced in zoo? 'Next show at 11.30'. Yeah, they actually held up the board and started shouting bout the starting of their sketch.

Nevertheless, it was a nice sketch. Besides being rather too quiet, the messages from the sketch is actually quite strong and direct. Oh yeah, we just love to make fun of the tree man. lol. You know, the guy with branches sticking out from his back and made it to front page with Datin Jeanne Abdullah :D

All in all, I had fun with the other brats and p2p-ers. Meeting new ppl and working with them and such. Despite the terrible weather.

Oh yeah, speaking bout the weather. I went home and showered. As i was rubbing off the painting off my arms, i was thinking:

"Why wouldn't this design comes off easily?"
"It suppose to, since its only water based"
"Wait a minute, everything did came off"
"Oh crap! I got sunburn and on the arm as well. The design was stenciled on my skin by the sunburn!!!"

Crocodile drew by Sheena


Tortoise/turtle/random shapes drew by Ilyas


Anyway, I'm off to Phuket tomorrow and I'll have a lot of fun there! :D

The Star BRATs

For those of you not knowing what's BRATs(Bright Roving Annoying Teenagers), it's a young journalist programme under The Star. Basically journalism is not the main focus of the programme but more of a platform. BRATs is an experience for youth to be involve with the communities, issues, environment and so on. By having the media (newspaper and internet to be particular), that's how the youths voice out and be heard.

There will be 3 workshops per year. That's the very first stepping stone for any BRATs-to-be. Participants were shortlisted among many who sent in their essays as their entry. This is not any English camp where only people with extraordinary vocabulary will have the highest chance of being selected. It's just to ensure you have the basic command of English and writing. (Ever seen a newspaper article filled with jaw dropping '7 tiles Scrabble' words all over it? No right?)

I've been in BRATs since i was 16 years old, back in 2003. I could barely describe it briefly how it's like for me, but the BRAT's experience has been amazing and life-changing(if that's the role it has done) for me. I'm still not an excellent writer, but it did change the life of an ordinary quiet, shy and reserved guy (don't laugh! it's all true). From the participation in various activities and programmes, it gave me great experience and opportunity to gain more confidence, outspoken and whatnot.

Yes, I'm ain't a teenager no more. But yet I still keep coming back.
Why?
As simple as I enjoy being involved in it. I do hope it will make an impact to other young teens as it did to myself back at the days.

I lost count of the stuffs i participated or helped out. But i certainly do remember my own workshop. Like any other workshops (although i participated in only one workshop), it was filled with fun, excitement and of course some stress too. You all know what I'm taking bout :)
Bout a month or two after i 'graduated' from BRATs, i volunteered to help out for this Shelter Boys camp at The Farm, Lenggeng. That was my very first volunteering job. Like a ball down the hill, it just start rolling and still rolling till now.

Apart from volunteering, there's the senioring too. BRATs considered this the utmost privilege.
Remember the workshop I mentioned? For each workshops, there will be 4 older BRATs selected and 'sort of' being the facilitator. It includes taking care, guide, entertain, and in particular angle,mentally torturing(lol) the participants.

So yeah, whoever gets selected to be a senior will get alot of jealousy and awe from the rest. Of course you wouldn't be able to see the stress the seniors went through :)
No doubt it's fun. Be able to meet other seniors and participants as well. I'm not quite sure what are criterias or requirements to be selected as one. But it took me 2 years before I seniored my first workshop, and half a year to senior my first Junior BRATs workshop.
Some only took like few months (damn it!).

All in all, there's a lot to be done as a BRATs, besides senioring and volunteering. There's the Ole BRATs pullout published on the last Sunday of each month. Which most oversea BRATs took this opportunity to contribute stories/experiences when studyin abroad.
Oh yeah, another excitement will be seeing your own article (and possibly picture) in the newspaper :)

Feel free to drop any comments or questions. I suppose I'm able to answer most of the questions, being a 'veteran' BRATs. Haha...

Being Penangite BRATs For 4 Days

Laughter, stress, drowsiness, boredom, fatigue, andof course wackiness.
Those are the words to describe the recent BRATs Penang workshop i seniored. If only by a word, i would say laughter.

Among the few workshops I've seniored, this one really cracks me up. As usual with BRATs workshops, this one filled with various participants of colourful personalities.
You have the energetic 1, the laughing 1, the 'blond' 1, the blur 1(actually in brats, we have loads of them), the quiet 1, the lost 1, the sleepy 1, the emo 1...and the list goes on.

Not gonna elaborate much bout the programmes they went thru, as probably the rest of BRATs already blogged that out.
To have a little fun, lets make this post a little different.

10 Things You Should Know About The Penang Brats Workshop 2008

#1
First thing came to anyone's mind when being informed bout goin for Penang BRATs: "Wow, I'm sure you get to try loads of good food there!"
These poor participants were crying out loud of wanting to eat Penang food everyday k. Cause all meals were provided and its all IN the hotel. Lol. Like I told them, technically they are eating Penang food, only in a hotel of course *evil grin*

Niki was being nice to people as usual (maybe he should pay me to say this), so there was a night where everyone was given Rm10 and we're free to roam down to the nearby hawker street to fulfill their desire for PENANG FOOD.

I was sharing my funds with Gan, to widen up our choices of 'cuisine'. What do you know, my funds left with a negative RM2. And who the heck said Penang food is cheap??

#2
There were 2 contagious laughter BRATs.

I found the first one during the game of 'Honey, I Love You'.
This might seemed a lil mean, but she sucked big time in this game. Lol. Before the middle person able to do or say anything, she started laughing and blushing nonstop. I can already imagine her covering her mouth with her hands, taking 2 steps back and start laughing hysterically.

I'm not sure where I first heard the laughter of this 2nd person. She has this unique and hilarious type of laugh. And as said by others, she was never aware how her laugh sounded like!
While we're all laughing at some random jokes, we will probably spend the next few seconds laughing bout how she laugh upon it.

Ok, lets not say the word 'laugh' anymore.

#3
Loads and loads of Youtube videos were played during the workshop. Thanks to Niki's little interest of collecting funny and interesting vids.
During the multimedia session, he played the video of Gmail, Xbox, English language learning, Google, CNN and the most popular one, the Scrub's Guy Love! I think Ian loves that the most.

At other times, (just some little entertainment among us) there was the American Idol Renaldo Lapuz audition, Rick Miller doing the Bohemian Rhapsody (I love this the most) and some Russell Peters :)

#4
This might sound kinda unbelievable. but this batch of BRATs wasn't that enthusiastic to figure out our traditional BRATs riddles and IQ games!

I know I did torture them a little with some Papa and Mama. Before going on to Johnny Whoops and Grandma.
But when it comes to the arithmetics or we rather call it BRATematics, most of them gave up after few minutes and went back to their assignments!

Poor them, must be too stressed up.
Imagine you're so stressed up with assignments and suddenly someone asked you how many horses are there.

#5
Rubix cube!

I don't really know whatsup with Ian and Niki's obsession with the cube. But apparently there will be a huge commotion if there's someone actually able to finish it.

So far, I've only seen Kei done it. Did Jasmine finished that? Can't really recall it. I was busy playing the memory game using the cards. Darn it, took 4 people bout 10 mins to finish playing that.

#6
The BRATs really slept early during those 3 nites.

As usual we conduct the room check. To my suprise, half of them already lights off and sleeping! Oops, sorry for the 'inconvenience'.

Of course it sorta wasted my effort as well. As told, they were not suppose to open the door for anyone except the facilitators and the seniors. So after knocking or ringing the bell, I would start to dance in front of the door and hopefully they can recognise me thru the peephole.

Hey, I was bored k! Don't give me that eye-rolling look.

#7
Loads of creepy and weird tourist in the Sunway hotel.

I have nothing against Arab tourists or any hotel guests. But, it gets really creepy when they seemed to be TOO friendly.

I remember spotting Yew Chong being dragged into a conversation with few of the guys. They were showing him pictures and telling him their traveling experiences. I could see his expression that he wanted out from that conversation badly. But sorry man, couldn't rescue you out from there, I was rushing to get something done. lol.

During the last day, me and the other seniors were inside the van and ready to get to the bus station. I was waving goodbye to some of them who was waiting at the lobby front. While waving, this Arabian guy waved back at me and smile so ever happily as tho I'm related to him in an inseparable manner.

If only you could see my expression, there was a huge WTF written across my face.

#8
Vinu (if that's how you spell her name) has indirectly became the legendary aiyo ping pong piang BRAT. To make it shorter, sometimes we'll just call her the one.

Let say we have 20 rounds of the APPP game. Her group lost 16 rounds. 14 rounds was caused by her. lol.
Imagine she can sink her group 4 times in a row, and during that 4 times, it was their group to start off the new round! So imagine before even completing the APPP words, they already doomed theselves. Amazing.

She puffed, stoned, said Ping Ping and even shouted a group which doesn't exist.
No doubt, she is the one.

On another side note, apparently Niki still wanted to continue the tradition of using flour instead of musking tapes (due to the hotel policy of cleanliness in the function room). So, we played the final 6 rounds using flour(and water too) instead of tapes.

Niki: " Since its the end of the game, and group 2 got the worse out of any other groups...."

Ok, let me put away my watch and tag and sit in a comfortable position.
I can already see Muzani, Gan and Diyana running for cover. Of course the door was blocked by Phui Yee. So no point of running actually.

Before Niki able to finish his sentence of giving permission to group 2 to grab some flour and put it on anyone, I can already seen 2 or 3 of them came charging towards me with flour filled hands.

So yeah, moral of the story, seniors can never get away with it.

#9
The had hilarious performances, from all the 4 groups.

Seriously, it got us laughing so hard and nonstop.
It ranges from the imitation of Niki and Muzani to some inside jokes.

Added on with the Debra's laughter, it just took the entire thing up a notch.

#10
It's the very first workshop where the groups able to finish all their assignments!
1 slideshow presentation, 1 video presentation and 2 articles from each group. Never been done before. I seniored Taiping before this and they got either 1 slideshow or 1 video with 2 articles.

You guys totally nailed it. With all the stress and time constraint, still able to pull it off.
Good job :)
Or should I say great job?

Its all worthed it in the end, aint it? Nice articles being published in Ole Brats today. You can see your pretty and good looking faces in the papers as well as your hardwork.

Here are the videos from thestaronline.tv