~The Road Less Taken~

Thursday, September 11, 2008

ok here's the other interesting bits of the mckk trip!

opening ceremony and cultural exhibition, 25/8:
this was one of the things we weren't exactly looking forward to, given that we had scrapped and came up with our finished product on sunday, before realising we should spice up our booth with some videos and had to rush down to an internet cafe in town because youtube was blocked by the malaysian moe. but in the end it worked out all right!

i think i quite like doing this kind of stuff. i explained things about singapore over and over again until i needed a drink (of tea. more on that later), which is pretty good, given that i've been a malaysian for more than 90% of my life.

our cultural exhibition. sorry for the poor quality of photos - i took everything using my lousy 3.2mp phone camera.

oh and here's something i couldn't resist posting. (bryan, if you're reading i'm sorry, but i couldn't help myself)

bryan's look is classic. OMG. i just couldn't resist laughing whenever i saw this picture for some reason.

ok moving right along before i get owned for posting that picture.

homestay programme, 27/8-29/8:
I felt a strange charm about the Malaysian way of life in the villages – it is hard to explain in words, but I know I had grown emotionally attached to my foster mother, even though the homestay had only been for 2 days. Seeing the joy on their faces as they welcomed us, and the sadness in their eyes as they waved goodbye, welcoming us back to their home anytime, I couldn’t help but feel sad as well that we were leaving them.
(that was taken from my formal reflection)

and yes although the living conditions aren't necessarily as good as singapore's, it was still a really homely place. the cats in the house were nice, but even nicer was aunty daabaayah, my foster mother! she's a really wonderful lady, and she has my number so we can keep in touch! =)

oh the place we went to for the homestay was ulu kenas. and we were based in the ulu kenas primary school (sekolah kesebangsa'an ulu kenas. yay for my malay.)

the area around ulu kenas, complete with morning fog.

the (seemingly) endless road leading to and from ulu kenas! o.0

aunty daabaayah with hassan, fauzan and me.

cultural exhibition and merdeka celebrations, 30/8:
ok this was the real crunch time. we only finalised our performance 2 hours before the actual thing, and our slides were only completed 10 minutes beforehand (according to abhinav). it's times like that which really leave you feeling a little dumbfounded and wanting to give up, but i guess my experience in getting stressed (look no further than my white hair) paid off.

and brian mcknight's "win" helped too.

it truly is rather inspirational for those willing to be inspired. that's all i'll say.

and in the end, with help from lame jokes such as:

"which is more talkative, bread or coffee?"
"which MRT station used to be a TV star?"

we did it. with a few pokes here and there at singapore's non-existent "dominant culture", or rather things such as singlish and kiasuism.

and afterwards was the celebration of national day in malaysia!

being 90% malaysian i decided to take up a malaysian flag and wave it frantically as national songs were being belted out on stage on the rugby field.

and there were fireworks right in school exploding right over our heads! cool. singapore might want to consider having something like that in schools such as the oldest one in the land.

fireworks.

and again. given the 2 second lag my phone camera has, managing to get something like this feels like an achievement actually.

ok now time for random pictures!

spectacular fail at taking an emo picture from my apartment.

trying to be artistic yet again. this is at the mosque near the palace.

ex-president of india, dr. a. p. j. abdul kalam in the house. and getting mobbed. i tried to take his picture but once again failed.

in the end this was the only picture i got of him. what a fail.

zulikhwan! imba organiser! somehow reminds us of sadikin! (according to stitch)

syafiq! participant and good friend! =)

rezza! another good friend (and your shirt is on the way!)

aiman! the kangjie lookalike, again according to stitch.

syafiq (coco)! named as such because his father works at nestle. =D

the interior of changi airport's spanking new terminal 3.

it is rather beautiful, even if currently rather underused.

attempting one last time to take a nice looking photo.

ok so that's finally everything about mckk out of the system! next on the list: apcg outing! and that was really eventful too, so stay tuned. =)

I stopped to rest at 11:03 PM

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...