Sorry i haven’t been blogging much! Ever since we got back from France, it was immediately jet lag-battling, back-to-work drowning, Life Errands-sorting stuff in 4 days; before six of us darted off to the Dusun for a weekend getaway.
Kenny organised it for Cammy’s 30th birthday, and we all divided groceries for meals between couples across our 2-night stay. As usual, we brought too much food… but better to be over prepared than craving.
All in all; we ate raclette, saucisson, tarama, foie de morue, salads, ham + egg sandwiches, Chinese herbal chicken drumstick noodles, steak tenderloins, breakfast of bacon and eggs, and i think that’s it… Drank champagne, Shiraz, tequila, rum, single malt whiskey, gin, and beer.
Clem and i brought the Dusun family some saucisson and gave Hansi a Mr. Potato Head. He seemed more enamoured with my camera i held out to him tho.
Helen’s eyes widened slightly and i quickly said, “Oh it’s okay, it’s water-proof and shock-proof!”
She said, “But is it child-proof?”
Me: “Well, that’s why Clem got it for me…”
For little hands holding a small camera, Hansi took a pretty decent shot of me!
I took a picture of his painting from that afternoon.
Didn’t even notice the dolphin at my feet till going through the pictures.
Hansi took this picture too!
I brought a bunch of pink balloons (cos Cammy likes pink), pink streamers (she coincidentally brought some too!), and a balloon pump (cos there’s no way i’m gonna blow all those balloons up with my mouth. Where’s my butler…) to decorate the place. Matt and i hid upstairs and blew a few up to rain down on her as a surprise, but we got to six balloons and felt left out doing it by ourselves so we rained down what we had then continued the rest downstairs.
I tried to pump a balloon up till it burst and it got SO VERY BIG. Clem said i was scaring myself more than Matt or Kenny; whom i innocently stood next to, subtly pumping away on the balloon pointed at them, all the while talking to them.
It finally burst into hundreds of little pieces… (who knew?)…
Ever had a good idea and told all your friends about it, but because of lack of funds, you brush it off as one of the many genius moments you have, and nothing comes to fruition? We all do that. Heck, i do that all the time (but now i try to tell someone else about those ideas in case they’d like to use them).
An idea is worthless unless acted upon.
What i’m liking about this decade is how everyone seems to EMBRACE IDEAS more than before.
Ideas have been spurring our evolution for eons, but i feel that ever since the internet existed, everyone is a lot more confident and accepting of new ideas. Cool ones, crazy ones, even ones that don’t bring forth any gain except happiness.
Everyone has ideas, everyone is creative. It’s just a matter of discovering what type of creativity you fall into, and expanding that ability you have. The problem with part of our schooling system is that it doesn’t teach us to be creative with our lives. I had to learn that after i left, and am still getting the hang of it as i move into my 30s.
If i could shake each of you and look you in the eye and say, “YOU have a brilliant idea! Tell me it!”, i would and you would think i’m crazy. But i’m not. I truly believe that every person has at least one great idea at any moment. This is a question i love to ask people when i’m out socialising. Once you break down that wall and get them talking about their dreams, KAPOW! There’s a SPARK in their eye, they start talking really fast, and you’re grinning ear-to-ear from feeling their excitement.
Of course, you can’t just expect every idea you have to be awesome.
It takes practice, research, and having faith in yourself.
I love love love this campaign that DiGi is having for the next few months, cos it’s based on ideation.
The DiGi Challenge for Change (DiGiCFC) is getting anyone from the ages of 12 and above to submit their ideas for a great mobile app. 4 ideas from 4 categories will be chosen as winners, and each winner will receive RM5,000 cash!
You don’t even have to worry about building the app, cos that’s another competition on its own where 4 app developers will win RM25,000 each!
The main goal of the mobile app you dream up,
is that it has to be innovative and bring positive change to Malaysians 🙂
There are 4 categories you can submit your ideas under, which are:
1. Discovering Culture
2. Learning & Edutainment
3. Health & Wellness
4. Connected Citizens
Well, *i* had a little idea so i thought i’d just submit it for fun XD
Watchu think? Ok right!? I like the name mostly – ONS! Haha…
The Ideation Challenge is until 18th January 2014, so everyone in Malaysia has until then to submit their ideas.
Check out some crazy entries some people have submitted so far *here*
During the Ideation Challenge phase, DiGi will hold ideation workshops at universities across the country and #IDEAJAM – a 2-day ‘idea hackathon’ where 20 shortlisted ideators will be chosen to discuss with industry experts to further refine their ideas.
After the 4 winning ideas are chosen,
the App Development Challenge kicks off from 26th January – 24th April 2014.
During this phase, Malaysian developers are invited to partake to build mobile apps based on the 4 winning ideas and participate in HACK!@DiGiCFC, a 36-hour non-stop mobile app hackathon weekend.
It’s a great opportunity for developers, cos each app will be made available for download and review by the public, and if your app wins, you win RM25,000 and DiGi will promote it to their customer base which includes 6.8 million mobile internet subscribers! Imagine almost 7 million people being exposed to an app YOU created!
Some of the winning apps from last season’s challenge have progressed to becoming a fully established mobile app start-up, and attended the Digital Winners Conference in Oslo as part of their Telenor Group Award for developing the best mobile app.
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Prizes for the DiGi Challenge for Change are more than RM200,000 in cash and experiential prizes including:
RM5,000 and a smartphone for each of the top 4 idea finalists
RM25,000 for each winning app in the respective categories
RM25,000 for the best overall idea winner of the DiGi Innovation Award
Telenor Group Award for the best developer / team
A host of promotions and go-to-market support from DiGi.
For more information on DiGi Challenge for Change and how to participate, visit: www.digicfc.my
Er wow, i have so much work to dive right into (yay!) that i’m just gonna post up some pix of Christmas first and add the words later XD TA! Busy fairy signing out.
Me scaring Emma
Oh i wish i had a cellar! A place to keep all our wines in stellar condition! The best we could do in KL is get a cooler i guess.
In the middle is Delphine, Clem’s cousin who resides in San Fran. Her children Romeo and Lella are next to her.
Clem’s cousin Manu is a hardcore ACDC fan. I didn’t even take pictures of everything in that room… especially since there are books, mags and probably clothes in the cupboards too!
We broke open his ACDC beer and wine, wasn’t too bad actually.
Even tho it’s SO NICE to travel and be on holiday and eat different yummy food and be disconnected from home base and work, there’s nothing like the feel of your own bedsheets on your skin and full knowledge that the thread count is exactly to your suiting. Of course, it would be better if i wasn’t experiencing such bad jet lag, so that i could be sleeping peacefully on those bedsheets instead of lying awake in the dark for 2 hours before giving up and attempting to answer emails instead.
I even napped for only two hours this afternoon so i’d be robbed of body clock sleep and yet i JUST CAN’T SLEEP. Oh, and i slept real little on the plane too. Clem slept so much more on the plane, took the same nap as me, and feel dead asleep at midnight -_-
Despite thinking i’d pass out upon returning home, the OCD in me couldn’t stop myself from unpacking and doing the laundry. Had a drink (just teh ais, no alco) with Jon and Shaun earlier. Jon told me about the tragic story of a drunkard dad falling off his 7th floor balcony in front of his children. Freaky thing is i knew about this story before cos Clem said his boss saw someone falling off the building on a Sunday morning while he was playing golf in Tropicana. (Ugh, don’t want to think about it anymore. Change topic.)
I happily passed some pate and saucisson to the both of them, cos they’re the only thing Clem and i brought home as presents for friends and provisions for ourselves. We managed to lug home all our clothes, presents from relatives, food worth 250 euros, some toys i bought, and a bunch of books from Collete cos they happened to be on sale, and even a Raclette machine. Oh and a giant hardcover book about 3ft tall that was Clem’s favourite as a child (it’s to help me practice my French). All our stuff was almost 80kg altogether :p Damn, writing about that made me tired. Maybe this is really gonna help me feel sleepy. Or talk a lot of rubbish here. Which i might cringe at tomorrow.
God i’m just looking at all the stuff around me in our house. We have so much shit – my toys everywhere… Alfred the reindeer in the corner, two poufs, our laundry hanging in the house cos outside is too dusty from construction across the road. I can’t wait to move so we more SPACE to look organised and neat!!!! I was anticipating renovations to be about RM50k (if i’m lucky) to RM75k. But from talking to Jon who just renovated his apartment, and based on previous gauges from Kenny and Serena, it’s gonna be costing me RM100-125k. Wadda… but i’m willing to just go all the way cos there’s no way we’re gonna bother renovating a few years’ down the line after moving our stuff in.
I told Clem i’m aiming and envisioning to earn 10k… euros per month, by end of the year. I used to give myself a salary target every couple of years, and i think it’s time to up my own game… … seeing how much renovation and mortgage is gonna cost ptui. Plus i really want to still have money to travel.
There are still so many places on my bucket list i’m dying to go to, and this is without even researching where i want to go cos my current list is already so long! I want to go to Istanbul, Croatia, Tallin in Estonia, Greece (anywhere in Greece, especially by the sea), Machu Picchu in Peru, Cape Town and other parts of South Africa, Geneva to visit friends and ski, Lapland to see that Santa Claus Town, Iceland to see the nothern lights, Alaska for its insane nature, LA and San Fran, a road trip in America would be awesome, a road trip in Australia would be awesome too, Clem and i say how we want to visit New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan and Korea. I want to explore India but he doesn’t. I wish we could be on holiday together forever. (This sounds like i’m gonna need more than 10k euros/month.)
Ok i’m gonna list down the food we brought back just so i can refer back to it when we go again next time.
– saucisson: lots of different types, maybe about 15 sticks (most to give away). And even two small bags of snack saucisson to bring out at nights.
– lots of tins of pate and rilette
– a few jars of foie gras
– some duck liver or something for salads that i haven’t tried before
– viandox, it’s some meat blood sauce that Clem’s dad used with fried shallots for salad dressing, and was super yummy
– some Benedicta mayo. we prefer it to Kewpie
– lots and lots of packets of serrano, viande de grison, and all kinds of hams
– apricot and blueberry jams
– cassoulet
– duck confit. Clem thinks i’m way too obsessed about this one.
– one jar of soup de poisson
I think that’s it… God i better not get hungry now. Gonna try to sleep.
I always thought how Threadless’ consumer-driven concept could be converted into something that would benefit wannabe fashion designers in Malaysia, and now someone has done it!
Check out Mewze: an online brand that enables designers to submit their ideas, let the public vote for their favourites, and then see the production of selected designs into reality. The pieces will be sold to the public, with the designers responsible getting credit and royalty for every sales performed.
A simple but effective way to push and support fashion creativity in our community 🙂 Mewze aims to empower indie designers by being the link between them and the public. By doing so they’re also hoping to increase the confidence, creativity and numbers of indie designers.
That means if you always wanted to design something to sell, but got put off by the operational and marketing side of things, then you no longer have an excuse.
The 5 easy steps you have to take if you’re a designer:
1. Sketch and Submit as many designs as you wish cos it’s FREE.
2. Promote your designs and get your friends to vote.
3. Once your design is selected, a sample will be made to ensure the end product is according to satisfaction.
4. Once everyone is happy with the sample, the design is produced.
5. The finished pieces are sold online and designers get royalties from sales!
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If you’re not a designer but interested in supporting new talent, here are the 4 steps you take:
1. Vote for your favourite designs. You can vote for as many as you please and 5 lucky voters stand to win USD500 worth of prizes.
2. Promote and push your favourite designs on your social media to see it come to life!
3. If you see your favourite design come to life, buy it!
4. Alternatively, you can surf for previous designs and shop for them as well.
Mewze’s first challenge for aspiring designers is to design a Little Coloured Dress.
They’ve got a pinterest board that shows some of the submissions for the category so far:
The winning designer will win USD500 (not including voters who win prizes up to that amount too!)
View *submission details here*
