Kite Festival (2018/2019)

Kite Festival at Pasir Gudang (2018/2019)

It was a very hot day and a very crowded festival. At one point, we followed the way and it leads us to a village, we can see a little bit of Pulau Ubin (Singapore) from where we were at (in Malaysia). It’s crazy to think of how a country only a sea away from us is so far away now.

In the office, we are all finally getting back on the schedule again after almost 6 months. Everyone is adapting to the new normal, life still goes on. Getting back to what we used to be doing is not ignoring the entire situation going on outside and live in our own bubble but to learn to carry on regardless of the crazy situation outside. Now I am kind of scared seeing people’s mouths, suddenly everyone could be infectious and could be a threat to us. Invisible enemies are the worst.

The distance between peoples is infinite.

#IMAKETHINGS (#5, Moobong Crochet)

Giphy’s compression is so bad.

I have become a very crafty person during the MCO period, here’s to my first crochet project, it isn’t perfect (I gotta say).

My sister’s birthday was coming up at that time and given her huge love for her favorite K-pop group MAMAMOO, I decided to do a crochet version of Mamamoo significant radish lightstick and a cloak with huge “M” on it inspired by the superman costume Snowball wore in the movie The Secret Life of Pets.

I remember back in my secondary school day, Voodoo Doll was a huge thing among the students and everyone was trying to make their own version of Voodoo Doll and different color have their own different meaning such as some will brings you love, some will brings you luck, but a student in his/her middle school day were usually hoping for loves.

That was the first time I picked up a crochet needle, it was hard and the internet wasn’t accessible as it is now, you can only either follow writing pattern or follow what your friend does. For a visual learner like me, it was sure hard. I ended up didn’t succeed in making my own Voodoo Doll and has abandoned crochet for years in my mind thinking I will never actually made anything out through crochet.

This MCO and especially this project has given me hope. More projects coming up. If you do (I wouldn’t say everything) with patience, the path will surely be less bumpy.

April 2019, Camping trip to Recreational Forest Sungai Bantang (Bekok)

Heavy pictures loaded.

Not only until recently while I am sorting out my archive, I found out that I hadn’t even share the photo that I took on my film camera on this blog before.

This is the first batch from the new develops lab I went to before I will always go to the one in my town, but then since this lab is located in Kuala Lumpur, mailing my rolls over is the only way to get it to develop at their lab. I gotta say the result blows me away, some of the pictures above are straight outta the file while the lab in my town always requires me to do the post-work.

I took these photos on the camera that I currently wanted to sell. I am in contact with a photographer who is keen on buying this. A young, ambitious photographer, I’m delighted every time when my hobby leads me to like-minded people.

A year has passed by, I became friend with some of the people I met from this trip and we still met up regularly.

I originally wrote Things are getting better on my side, how about you? but my thought changed after watching the news and now I am wondering, when will this go away?

December 2018, Langkawi

Heavy pictures loaded.

I previously had written about this trip but I discovered I still had photos that I hadn’t post or define by me at that time as “bad picture” but my mind has changed over time and since we can’t travel right now the only thing I can do is to repeatedly chew on every bit of my past travel memories plus I just don’t want some images to not see the light and I know in this enormous internet world, there is bound to be a space for these pictures to stay.

This trip was a pretty spontaneous trip as the year has come to an end and we need to use up all of our annual leaves before the year officially end. The friend who went with me hit the bottom of her job at that time, her boss was and still ridiculous but I am glad she has now has found her way to deal with those craps that her then didn’t have. I still remember I texted her in the morning talking about the trivia stuff about the trip, she didn’t reply as her boss doesn’t allow her to use her phone during working hours and in the evening she called me while crying out of frustration she got from work in the evening when I was still at my then-colleague house for a small gathering.

Our stay was closed to the beach and we had a balcony room, unlike other tenants. Every morning we woke up in the daylight and sometimes we woke up and see the boat returned but we never make it to see the sun rises and had only enjoyed the sunset view one time. We went to the rooftop bar for a drink one night and one of the waiters from Turkey looks exactly like my then-colleague, we happily chatted and I somehow wish I can travel and work around the world too. And one night my friend and I parted at the beach and I lost her and I was harassed by a man who said he know my friend’s location, of course, I didn’t go with him.

I went to places I previously didn’t go and eat at some rare, remote but delicious restaurant I otherwise wouldn’t go if I didn’t go with this friend. My friend is a person who likes to take adventure when possible and wouldn’t hesitate to take a new challenge and as contrast, I am a person who will think thoroughly before taking any action. Sometimes, I just wish I were someone courageous.

December 2018, Rainforest Tree House

This is a series of my throwback photos collections taken by my film camera, heavy picture loaded.

It was my second time to bring my Olympus OM-10 film camera on a trip. At that time, I was still not familiar with the whole mechanism of a fully manual film camera, a lot of the photos are either out of focus or overexposed, my heart sunk when I got the developed rolls back. I didn’t expect the result to be great but at the very least not to be too terrible, but it was just what it was.

I’ve never written about this trip on this blog (perhaps I did write on another site, I moved around quite a lot). When you grew up, it’s hard for friends to gather in all people showed up, we almost did for the trip, but another friend was sent out to the region last minute.

We arrived in this place in heavy rain, the road to our accommodation didn’t have a single roof shield (it was meant to be not to have a shield as this is in a jungle) Luckily, no one got sick.

We were fortunate as we and another family were the only 2 groups of guests on that day, we were given a large hut. The houses were made by bamboo so at night when the weather gets chilly, the bamboo will shrink and made creak voices which frightens me, I got scared not because of ghosts or intruders hidden in the jungle, but because of the monkey. We got some clear boxes in the house to put our belongings and bags inside, when you left the room you need to put the lids on, sealed it and turn the boxes upside down just in case the monkey barged in.

The dinner place was on top of the hill. Dinner was a stew with mixed vegetables, yummy and healthy to even until these days I still remember the taste, we used charcoal powder to clean our plates afterward. The sky has completely darkened when it’s time for us to get back to our huts, we were all careful to not slip or steps on frogs.

The next day, we went on hiking along with the guide and another group of guests. The road was slippery because of the rain the day before. The tour was guided by the girl in the above picture, she was from the US, I forgot her name but at that time she was a volunteer for the place and have just finished her uni in Malaysia. We climbed trees, swing with rattan from the tree, caught giant ants who didn’t bite, climbed over the dead big tree trunk cover with moss. Got ourselves covered with mud but happy, play staring games with monkeys on that sunny day. We left the place in the afternoon.

It was fun, we kept talking about going back but we never did for the past years. Perhaps, someday in the future.

Renoir

Before I head to the airport for the returning flight, I still have some KRW left, and knowing I won’t be returning to the country any sooner I spent it mindlessly at a Daiso in Itaewon. This is one of the few things that I’ve got in the store. I have always wanted to shot a video on doing this and finally got some time to do it.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir <Dance in the Country>

Recent (End of June 2020)

I have been going back to the office to work but since we wanted to limit the physical human contact, we are all on rotating shift mode. I only come to work every afternoon so I usually will have a quiet afternoon and I like that. Besides work, I have my kindle with me.

The face mask has become the necessity of our daily life, weigh just as important as our wallet as our car key. It’s uncomfortable to wear it for a long time but it is the only way to lower down the risk of getting sick. One used to be the weirdo who wore a face mask to a mall or whatnot but now you will be staring at if you walking around a mall or whatnot without a face mask on. Yeah, this is the new normal.

Getting back to work doesn’t mean that I had abandoned the hobbies that I found during the stay-at-home period. I have less free time now but I’m still doing it, slowly but surely. I really want to keep this going as this is something that I enjoy doing.

Today mark one year of my Korea trip, things have changed drastically and unprecedentedly in just a year’s time. Whenever I think of this trip, it still makes me happy even though this happened a long time ago, I will look forward to go back.

Time has compressed into small pieces that I couldn’t grab hold of, 7 months have passed, 2020 shattered.

Bang Bang Con: The Live!

Concerts didn’t just completely stop functioning because of the whole virus situation going on in the world and, instead, since you save the hassle of traveling and can just enjoy the concert everywhere you are, you can attend as many online concerts as you wish. But personally, for me, most of the time concerts ended up become the byproduct of my traveling and the atmosphere you feel at the concert hall the dynamic is something that I really enjoyed and live for. Of course, an online concert can never come close to a live experience but for a concert-goer, this sure is the best thing we can have for a while.

I didn’t sit through the whole 16 hours of Concert from Home: BANG BANG CON marathon happened back in mid-April where they live-streamed all of BTS’s old to new concerts and fan-meeting video on YouTube.

It’s nice that some old songs were being performed again after years of release. I will always hope for things to get better soon.

On an unpleasant tattoo experience

Around a week ago I saw a tattoo Ad circulating on Facebook. I had the idea for my next tattoo for a while and I drew it on my rarely-use sketchbook, I decided to give it a go and book a slot. I got it done few days ago as we are on rotating shift for now and I don’t have to be in the office the whole day.

  • I have never seen a tattooist without a tattoo on their body (I take that as a cue of the tattooist never practice tattoo on their own body)
  • I never have seen a tattooist took out the sterilized needle with their bare hand and put it on the machine with their bare hand when the latex gloves are lying in front of the table.
  • There is no social distancing, my sister and I went together and we literally sit side by side when two tattooists on work respectively, whether or not of the coronavirus situation, should tattooist at least put on the mask? Or should I be grateful for them at least put on the gloves?
  • I don’t understand when the tattoo is done my tattooist uses her gloves-on hand to put on “vaseline” (as their aftercare) when there is plenty of clean popsicle stick on the side of the table for them to use?
  • They don’t even have the proper aftercare gel/balm ready for their customer
  • They use Bifesta makeup remover to clean the freshly done tattoo
  • My tattooist seems more passionate about taking pictures of my tattoo (she adjusted my hand couple of time for the “right angle” to look good in the picture) than to give advices to her customer

I definitely would not go back and I wouldn’t even choose them if it weren’t for the attractive price and I am sure there will be more people fallen into this trap like me though I have already stopped my another sister from going in. Lastly, I would like to advise anyone who wanted to get their first tattoo/tattoos: always go to the tattoo parlor or tattoo & piercing parlor who solely do tattoos or do tattoos & piercing only, never opt for beauty parlor which tattoo is just one of their many provided services as the tattooist they have are usually beginner or half-ass skills one who uses you as their lab rat while you still have to pay to be taken into the experiment.