Sounding like a piece out of Moulin Rouge’s Bohemian revolution! Well, close enough I suppose.

It was a great weekend spent with Luc and a privilege to finally catch Kyoto Protocol live on stage at Urbanscapes 2010. Traveled up on Thursday evening after making sure Muffin was feeling much better. Poor boy had to stay 2 days at Mount Pleasant Hospital due to his irregular blood cell count, caused by blood parasites. But he’s recovering now back at home, just want him to be back to normal soon <3.

Took the usual coach up from Concorde… and I was the only one boarding from SG! Thankfully, I had a small companion with me. (Plus the driver was very friendly)

(L) Excited!
(R) London Choco Roll

They also provided London Choco Roll! Usually it’s the pandan one..which is as good. Keeps me alive for the 5-hour trip. T_T

Bring-your-gf-to-work day

I also sat in the LowYat.net office on Friday and saw the boys (and girls) hard at work (and play) too. So trying to make myself useful, I guest wrote for LYN’s sister portal, Applemint.com. Article pending approval from editors. Will update the link soon!

The thunderstorm that happened in Singapore moved swiftly to KL and everything turned dark and gloomy soon after lunch.

(L) Work gets too far away
(R) Seeing doubles again

Met Fuad and Sarah for lunch at MV. It’s nice to meet the people behind the twitter handles and must add that they are really nice people too. Even though poor Sarah was being stressed out and pissed off that day. =/

A KL trip is not complete without meeting Liong (Fiong) and to help his weight-gain program, we had Carl’s Jr. And we had tea afterwards. So after that fattening fast food … I was banned from my delicious cupcakes. *Sobs*

KLue Urbanscape – The City’s All-Day Creative Arts Festival

Bought my pre-sale ticket (RM30) from Rock Corner on Fri evening for Sat’s Urbanscape, having no idea what to expect, what I would see or how the outdoor performances were going to be like. Honestly, I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived at Sentul Park where tons of people and number of tents greeted us at the entrance. It was a great turnout and apart from the flea market, there were painters and performances going on the whole day.

More pictures to come when my roll gets developed <3

The opening act at the Lawn Stage was An Honest Mistake. Very…youngish but they have a good sound and I love the electronic violin. Had a pretty good shot of the violinist to share later.

We zoomed around the festival and I bought buttons plus…CHOKI-CHOKI. 2 for RM0.50 . How awesome!! They also sold TOYO and Ding Dang snacks. Lala would be squealing too.

(img src)

If you hadn’t had a Choki, you haven’t lived. Or you’re born after 1991. *DAMNIT!*

Also saw some other acts, including super popular Yuna. I personally liked Najwa a lot, her sound was great and I loved her voice! My favorite song from her set was Got To Go.

The sweltering day was obviously not dampening any of the festival goers’ spirits. There were tons of cameras going around and saw some great film cams too. It was such a great feeling to just be in a foreign place and yet feel surprisingly at home.

Finally, at 6:30pm… the highlight of my visit to Urbanscape.. KYOTO PROTOCOL! *fan-girl scream*

Sorry for the poor quality, but the energy from the band was just friggin’ awesome! Obviously 124,634,831,674 x awesom-er live. Caw x 7

KP pictures from Luc’s stream, see the rest here.

Picked up some postcards too from the marketplace. Here are my ‘spoils of war’.

(L) I am a proud Junkie <3
(R) Beer,Balloons and the Boys

I had so much fun! And I didn’t want the weekend to end Glad that I made this trip up.

*P.s. And thanks baby <3 for everything.

Filed under: Peektures, Rants, Videos by Arien
Tags: « Arts - KL - music festival - urbanscape »
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(via http://news.webshots.com/album/554415738oVHAbL)

I love how the 60s looked and its so surreal to look back on the past and see the present and future as well. I think I would actually like living in the 60s-70s of Singapore.

Filed under: Uncategorized by Arien
Tags: « Peektures - Quick-Reads »
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Today’s Ms. Melodie’s last day at work. Well she’s off to further her studies and hopefully pick up her humanitarian career.

I’m all for that! All the best to her <3

Filed under: Rants by Arien
Tags: « illustrations - work »
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Thanks to Ms. BK we had a very girly, cuddly and fun first-ever SNL outing. We hauled our asses all out of the office by 6pm and made our way down to vivocity for our ‘surprise’ team-bonding activity.

I must say we’re all quite “ons” about it, cos besides it being a bear building workshop, we had to all pretend we were little girls. *stunned silence* 

Personally I wish I weren’t dressed so OL today! Haha, very hard to pretend I’m a little kid when I look like I can bring my little kid there loh.

The main activity, after the warm-ups, the choo choo trains and the ‘waking your bear up’ routine was to pick some clothes, fluff up your teddy and present it to the person whose name you got at the very beginning. 

I picked Mo’s name and made Rupert Jr for her. Rupert Jr has hot white boxers (Bearboxers) peeping out from his sexy denim low waist jeans. xD

And Mayda made the bear for me – Ruddy the teddy with hoodie.

After the teddy stuff, clothes grabbing and bear boxings, we had Japanese food for dinner. Guys, a bunch of girls can only be satisfied with good food…and loads of slightly salted Edamame ok?
The Edamame was awesome.

Somehow, our conversations went round to flexy thumbs. Apparently Stoofs cannot flex her thumb. xD
I made her do a sad face like the instant she discovered she cannot flexy her thumb, but fail. She stifling her smile.

BIG THUMB CLOSE UP!

But managed to get her sad face when she posed next to future super rocker chick, Mel J.

So FARNEE! Very contrasting set-up.

Dim Sum’s mommee is always so photogenic. See?

OH! And mr. @naijiz , this is for YOU. I can act cute next to stoofs, you cannot. *1 up*

What an eventful evening! *tired out*

Filed under: Celebrations by Arien
Tags: « Peektures - work »
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The long weekends also feel extremely short when you’re having fun. Both Luc and Liong came back on Fri for the long weekend, and we met up with Liong and Ying for lunchie at NYDC bugis junction.

You were wonderful, but I have to give you up if I want to get my 7s. *sobs*

The food there is per NYDC’s standards, love the big ‘O’ cheesecake, but the service was shit and the place was a ghost town. There were stuffed toys sitting at front tables. Not a sign of a good and busy restaurant?

see..Cookie monster say ‘no peeking!”

As usual, we were having a lot of random fun during lunch. Playing with our cameras (but Liong say he no zi pai anymore), the fish eye stuff on FXCam is great, Vignette’s better for the various camera effects.

Just playing around with the phones

Liong has the best iPhone (useless) app ever. It’s “Talking Carl” and me and Ying were just in hysterics playing with it.

Then after lunch, brought Liong to ION Orchard to check out the Heaven and Hell of shopping.

clearly he is ‘idol’ standard

Compared to The Gardens in KL, ION Orchard has certain brands that they don’t. And the best thing is…. Liong discovered ROYCE Chocolates. See! I thought you that it’s best thing to happen to you right? xD

But I have to avoid chocolate already… 7 jeans are on 50% off and I didn’t want to buy any cos I don’t want to fit in a size 29. I’m not asking for much! Just need to go down 1-2 sizes. Sigh.

Time to start exercising again and lay off the junk food.

Celebrated JY’s birthday at SC at night, just the regular bunch of people. Missing Sheryl, cos she was sick. Joey, Jaswant and Pingy also didnt make it.

Boys and girls, Karma really exists okay? I used to be so disgusted about Matt’s mambo-ing and the shuffling right? Dude, my bf is like the grandmaster of the KL-ian shuffling thingie.

/wrist

The usual suspects +1

*Deng* whose hand was that ah?! Dani right?

Muchs love

Unfortunately we only had 1/4 of Dani’s face in this shot

Woke up with a bad hang-over, then cramps, then gastric problems. Sigh. Getting old already , cannot do such things.

Also, will be trying to diet and exercise again. Dear friends, if you ever catch me eating badly or snacking, please stop me and remind me to go exercise. (Except when I’m having that time of the month, cos I cannot exercise then, I will faint. xD )

Another hectic week ahead!

Filed under: Celebrations, Peektures, Rants by Arien
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Congratulations to Lee on his Idol win!

(via nytimes)

So I read the results on NYTimes.com’s live blogging session and was tweeting about it after the news broke.

And as usual, there are both lovers and haters. Not of the winner or the show per se, but people who are vocal about it being ‘uncool’ to broadcast the results once its out. (Since the show will only be broadcast over Ch5 later tonight at 10pm)

Sure, you can consider it as a spoiler, but isn’t this what social media is about? Getting first-hand information at (almost) real time? Knowing the results is probably half the show, while watching the performances , good-byes to Simon and seeing the contestants again makes up the grand finale.

It’s not like there’s an NDA or embargo on the results. The mainstream media has already picked it up and put it online as well. Things like this ALWAYS happen whenever theres some (relatively) popular results show going on or something. How else would you know what’s going on? It’s entertainment news yes, but still news regardless.

kthxbai.

Filed under: Rants by Arien
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I’m so proud of you , two selection nonetheless.

“Last week I announced that we would be running a new feature here on the blog: The Epic Edits Flickr Challenge. For the first topic, I chose “street photography” and asked you to submit your best photos to the Flickr pool.”

http://blog.epicedits.com/2010/05/24/15-street-photos-from-our-readers/

Filed under: Peektures by Arien
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I have been updating a lot of my tumblr account instead of this one because somehow I always have problems accessing my blog here.

Which got me thinking about why I maintain more than one blog. Well, the other one was supposed to be a more ‘photography-related’ thing while I keep this for my daily and mundane stuff.

So for the sake of trying to restore some normality in my otherwise haphazard existence, here’s a post on my recent KL trip.

So my dear friends, you know that I am currently pursuing a long-distance relationship with my guy (as featured). It has been almost 2 months or so now, and the arrangement is working out quite okay. There are of course the down-sides of an LDR ,like not being able to meet up more often, bring each other a cup of tea or coffee when one of us is down or had a bad day, the distance, not being on the radar all the time and basically trying to live each others’ lives as normally as possible without actually missing out anything in the other’s.

In the good days when I visit, the trips are always filled with food. Lots of food. It is very unlikely that I will lose weight if this keeps up, but I guess it’s also making up for the less satisfying treats I get over here.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Food and fun aside. I feel a little alone sometimes and I wonder if we have drifted apart just a little. Not that it’s something we cannot resolve, just feel like there’s a lot that’s being left unspoken because the only time we get to spend together is already so precious, why waste it on making each other feel bad?

At least that’s what I think.

Just feeling emo.

Filed under: Rants by Arien
Tags: « blah existence - emollified - Luc »
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Had dinner with ganster and ah Lian (who looks like an Ah Beng now with his gangster ash blonde hair. I likes!) , a seemingly peaceful dinner with underlying dangers.

Bum Bum Bum. Let’s hope he gets past week one without burning out.

Walked to the bus stop and waited for the bus who takes two centuries between one another. When I finally got a seat between a sleeping dude and another one who is engrossed in his issue of Wall Street Journal, I felt a little melancholic and well not exactly lost, but rather just someone without a purpose.

This is what I thought I looked. Like those cut away scenes in dramatic movies, where the protagonist look longingly out of the window, into far away spaces? Minus the far away spaces and the longing, it was just a bleak stare, one without purpose. The sleeping guy had a purpose – he wanted to sleep, the Wall Street Journal guy had a purpose – he wanted to know more. At the exact moment where those surrounding me had a purpose, I did not.

It’s not as bad as it sounds, just a little unnerving.

Got home, waiting for the lift. Another restless wait.

Tap tap tap. The lift takes another century to reach ground level. Finally, entered me and the other girl whom I’ve known since she was a toddler. But I didn’t know which floor she stayed on, maybe I just forgot.

Back at home, after a nice scoop of ice cream, some quality tv (read: Top Gear) when I started to channel surf and realized…

T_T I NEARLY MISSED THE 10PM REPEAT ON CHANNEL5 AGAIN.

Going to watch Idol now. bless the rain.

Filed under: Peektures, Rants by Arien
Tags: « blah existence - illustrations - Peektures »
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Recently a lot of fail stuff happening. LOL

I hope it doesn’t become a long term practice. Anyway, nothing much to update now except, I’m excited about going up to Malaysia for DCiM this weekend.

And also to start on my collab roll with davidlomo. This will be on our fav film, Precisa 100 and on our cams BBF.

Had to take a photo for work, as a portfolio picture. Unfortunately, I do not have a standard portfolio worthy shot, so we had to take one and I had to try my best to edit it with GIMP. Let’s just say my GIMP skillz aren’t as l33t as my CS3 skillz.

The best way I could make the picture look, ended up looking like this:

Yep. I had to stylize and colorize it to make it look decent. Obviously this did not make it to the portfolio, the slightly edited one did.

Epic fail. I would appreciate Photoshop more now. *cuddles*

Filed under: Rants by Arien
Tags: « Arts - Peektures - work »
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