#BeObsessed - Win yourself a wardrobe makeover!

Being a girl, you figured it should be hardwired in our minds to be at least somewhat fashionable. Before I actually get to the real point of this post, first and foremost, you might wanna read this till the end if you wanna have your chance to win. NOW let's take a short stroll down memory lane (well from 2009):

2009

 I once wore a jacket that cost me RM1 from a bundle sale. That particular skirt at that date has been with me since 2004. True story.

2009

 My usual everyday wardrobe was (and still is) t-shirt (I still have that tshirt), jeans, sometimes a beanie and a sweater jacket.

And the skirt makes an appearance again! and this time I've paired it with a Cotton On top and a tank top I bought in Singapore a couple of years before.

2010

I wore a dress I bought in 2003 (which I still have) over an FOS t-shirt (which I also still have and wear).

AS YOU CAN VERY WELL SEE, my fashion sense didn't really kick in till much much MUUUUUUCH later like 2012. To be completely honest, it has never been my strong point nor did I actually cared about fashion in the first place. I've had and worn frilly skirts, ripped shirts -- my personal style leaned towards the grunge/punk, Cobain-meets-Vicious -- ripped jeans, school girl skirts, everything and anything off season. I'd wear sweaters during a very, very hot day.

But I know better now. 

Which brings me to my next -- and definitely THE MAIN POINT -- of this post. Working in post production (that's fancy talk to say film editor) -- meaning I hardly ever see daylight, let alone find time to go out to a mall to find clothes.

Zalora Malaysia is the answer to every busy career men and women who have absolutely no time to shop, but would still love to look good. With free shipping, 3 hour delivery on day of order (selected brands) AND 30 day return policy, you can't ask for anything better.

And when I found out about this awesome campaign they're running, I totally jumped on it!

Zalora Malaysia is giving my readers and I a chance to win a freaking awesome wardrobe makeover worth up to RM1500 under their BE OBSESSED campaign. RM1500. EACH. One RM1500 makeover for me, and one RM1500 makeover for YOU. I don't know about you, but I am in DESPERATE need of a pretty sweet wardrobe change.

I'm a pretty simple girl. I fashion myself a workaholic and despite the fact that I don't see daylight as much as I love to, I'd like my wardrobe to be versatile (with just a hint of Sid Vicious, just to stay true to the punk style I grew up with) so I can just go out for a night out in the town - with my man or my girls - the moment I clock out of work. And if I get that RM1500 wardrobe makeover, these are most definitely my picks:

 

 

 

Why I want to win this? As I said before, I don't go out to shop for new clothes that often. But despite the fact I stay in as my job requires me to be, I'd like to be comfortable and I would still like to look good when clients walk in and out because doing what I do, our clients are famous directors, actors and artists - local and international and of course, I have to look my best while at the same time be comfortable and not over the top.

SO HOW CAN YOU WIN THIS PRETTY DAMN SWEET RM1500 MAKEOVER TOO?

All you have to do is COMMENT on this post as creatively as that amazing grey matter in yer noggin' can possibly come up with in 10 words on WHY YOU DESERVE TO WIN THIS MAKEOVER WITH ME. 

And then I'll pick THE WINNING COMMENT and send it off to the awesome peeps at Zalora Malaysia. SIMPLE RIGHT? WHO ELSE IS GONNA GIVE YOU THIS AWESOME OPPORTUNITY? (AND remember to leave your email address too so I can get to you if you win ;D)

And the best part: gender be damned -- ANYONE CAN JOIN yes boys this means you too.

The Prizes are:

1st Prize

RM1500 worth of makeover for the blogger + RM1500 worth of makeover for the winning commenter

2nd Prize

RM1000 worth of makeover for the blogger + RM1000 worth of makeover for the winning commenter

3rd Prize

RM500 worth of makeover for the blogger + RM500 worth of makeover for the winning commenter

Holy nyan that's pretty damn sweet, ain't it? But you gotta be fast! You have A WEEK to comment. I need your comments by 7TH APRIL 2012 (FRIDAY) because I need to send the entry and your winning comment by 8th April ;)

Wait what. Don't know what Zalora is? GO EDUCATE YO'SELF FOO'!

Website: http://zalora.com.my

Facebook: http://facebook.com/zaloramalaysia

Twitter: http://twitter.com/zaloramalaysia

HURRY AND GET THEM COMMENTS IN!

Journey into Distance Learning

I've heard and read about online learning. Distance learning universities called it and to be completely honest, it didn't interest me all that much when I first read about it a few years back. I knew I could do distance learning for my degree but I wasn't interested. Mainly because there's really nothing more I'd like to learn from my old university.

But a few days ago, I realized that I was a little bit burnt out from being in post for the past 2 years. I know it's a short time but if you've been through what I have -- late paychecks, long painful projects, 6 to 7 day work week -- you'll get the idea why I'm tired. Then I realize it's probably about time to maybe put something new under my belt.

I had dreams of going for single university classes - subjects that I was really interested in. The stuff you see in American movies/TV shows or read. As far as I know, they don't have that here in Malaysia. If you wanna take a class, you have to take the whole damn course.

And then I stumbled upon this. And rather timely too:

University of California Los Angeles offers online Summer classes at their Theater, Film & TV Department, Art Department and I think their Engineering department. The classes available aren't complete degree courses (it could be I think), but they are actual classes available during the normal academic year. The class are credited, transcripts and actual grade will be given and yes, credit transfer wherever available.

dent

Although it still cost quite a bit for us (goddamn currency exchange), it doesn't cost nearly as much as having to apply for a student visa to the US, medical check-up, student housing, flight tickets and international student processing fee. 

Fee is counted per unit and per unit costs US$339. The class I took was Screenwriting Fundamentals which carries 2 units. That comes up to US$678.

When you register, there'll be a processing fee you have to pay. International students normally would have to pay US$400 as processing fee because of their visa and medical records but because the online nature of these classes, there's no need for that. Instead, the processing fee is $150. That $150 is charged to your credit card at the beginning of the registration process and it'll be applied to your BruinBill account within 24 hours or enrollment. 

But here's a kicker, processing fee is NOT the same as registration fee, which is an additional US$550. Truth to be told I couldn't believe the number I was looking at. There was another service charge or something fee of US$16. 

So what I had to pay for C132 Screenwriting Fundamentals was:

$150 + ($339x2 units) +  $550 + $16 = $1394

Summer processing fee + Summer course fee + Summer Group Registration Fee + Instr Enhancement

At present, that would amount to RM4291. Which is still cheaper than a one way flight to Los Angeles. And for a complete 6 weeks credited course.

UPDATED: So I emailed UCLA last night about explaining the fees to me and they said that yes, they accidentally charged me as though I was an international student coming to UCLA. And they accidentally charged the processing fee AGAIN. 

So what I have to pay for C132 Screenwriting Fundamentals are:

$150 (which has already been charged) + ($339 x 2 units) + $16 = $844 (RM2599.35)

How am I going to pay for this when I'm being blacklisted for not being able to repay my previous student loan? I'm taking a loan from someone who won't impose ridiculous interest rates: my father.

I honestly felt HORRIBLE when I saw the final payment amount, and I thought of just backing out and repay the nonrefundable $150 processing fee to my dad. But he told me to go ahead and take but also focus, do well and see it all the way through. Which I fully intend to. Because I'm finally about to learn something I'm interested in from a school.

I can't thank my dad enough for giving me this opportunity. I can't stop apologizing and thanking him for it. My class will only start in June but I will start paying next month and every month after that. 

I'm going back to school!

School and Other Horror Stories

Today, every kid fresh out of secondary school goes back to it to pick up their SPM - which is their final secondary school exams - scores. To most people in this fair nation of ours, it's a pretty big thing. To others, it's a big thing for a while and then they realize that's just the beginning of the parade of shit that will soon greet them.

Being Asian, we're obsessed with straight As. This particular exam allows students to take up elective subjects in order to be able to get more As on their transcripts. Compulsory subjects are 6, some kids take up to, I don't know, I think 16 was the most someone has ever took. When I took it, I took 10 subjects.

For those who aren't familiar with the Malaysian education system, our secondary schools -- particularly in the 4th and 5th year -- classes are categorized as Science Stream and Art Stream. Both streams are required to take the same core subjects (being Bahasa Malaysia/Malaysian Language, Modern Mathematics, History, English, Islamic Studies for Muslims and Moral Studies for non-Muslims) but Science students take up Chemistry, Physics and/or Biology and Art Stream take up Compound Sciences, Commerce, Geography, Accountancy, etc -- which they are allowed to drop as they are electives.

When I was taking my SPM, I took Bahasa, English, Math, History, Islamic Studies, Literature in English, Arts, English for Science and Technology (in my time, Science was taught in Bahasa), Tassawur Islam (which is pretty much Moral studies in an Islamic context which can be taken by non-Muslims) and Compound Sciences.

Let's just say when I picked up my results, it wasn't the proudest moment of my parents' lives. Although I did get As for my English subjects (save for literature, I got a C for that. I was horrible -__-), I did pretty average on a few other subjects and completely failed two subjects.

I went on to apply for university here in Malaysia because with my results I couldn't get a scholarship and my family can't afford to send my overseas. None of my siblings ever went overseas. I stayed at that university for a year until I dropped out due to some personal issues that turned my grades upside down. I figure I should do my dad a favor and stop letting him spend so much money on a private university. I spent 6 months after that in a total lull, and being quite depressed because my friends are out learning and I was stuck at home, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life.

6 months down, I decided to go with dad's idea of enrolling into a local public university. Everyone there were Malays and carry Bumiputra statuses. I didn't fit in that well. I couldn't speak Malay naturally even up to that point. At this point, I was 20. The 3 years I was in this university, I was depressed, solitary and develop a some sort of distrust towards everyone.

But I stuck with it because my dad wanted me to graduate, even if it was just a diploma (yes, we don't get diplomas when we graduate high school in Malaysia, which I think is ridiculous. We should graduate with a diploma after high school).

Even before I graduated I was already interning and have a job -- despite it being against school rules -- because I so desperately wanted to get a job immediately. While everyone went on to continuing with their degrees, I ran off to find a job because I refuse to let my parents pay for my shit any more.

I went through two jobs before I finally found where I belong. Which is here, right now, in post production.

My point is, even if you did or didn't get straight As in your secondary school exams, it's not everything. Even if you go off to the most prestigious universities and colleges, it doesn't guarantee you a job if you don't have the right state of mind and the passion to do it. Even if you only have a diploma under your belt you can still get the job you want, in the industry you want and be blissfully happy. And if you feel that you HAVE to go back to school afterwards, with online classes being all the rage right now, you can still take classes.

Which is what I plan to do. I stumbled upon online summer classes for screenwriting from UCLA and after discussing it with my dad about taking up a small loan (the class isn't insanely expensive because there's no travelling fee, visa, etc. And it being just ONE class from the syllabus). But of course, I have to take my IELTS and actually enrol and register the class... but it's okay. One by one. Even if it's one class, it's a UCLA credited class, and it'll be nice to have that under my belt and hopefully I can take the advanced class next summer.

So kids (if you manage to read up till here), don't worry about your grades. As long as you love and have passion for something and willing to work beyond the classroom, you can do anything.

For the love of cooking.

I never really learned how to cook from my mother. Whatever I whipped up was pretty much a product of recipes from books and the internet, experimentation and desperation. The past few days I've been cooking quite a bit from pancakes for breakfast to steaks for dinner. I've been pretty good not to introduce too much rice into my diet. I used to eat a bucketload of rice for breakfast, lunch AND dinner. Now the most I do is for 2 meals. Trying to see if I can do 1.

My two new recipes I tried were flat iron steak with balsamic reduction I got off allrecipes.com and cajun and ginger chicken salad I whipped up quite randomly.

Steak with Balsamic Reduction

I changed the recipe up just a little bit because I didn't want an exact flat iron steak ( and I can't be arsed to cut it into small pieces ) so I left a whole slab of meat as it is.

Ingredients

• 1360 g flat iron steak
• 45 ml extra-virgin olive oil
• 15 g coarsely ground mixed peppercorns
• 9 g salt
• 15 g butter
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 235 ml balsamic vinegar
• 15 g chopped fresh parsley

Directions

1. Brush steak with olive oil, then press into ground peppercorns and season with salt; set aside. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add flat iron, and cook to desired degree of doneness, about 4 minutes per side for medium-rare.  
2. Once the steak has finished cooking, remove to a plate and keep warm. Stir the minced garlic into the skillet, and cook over medium heat until the garlic begins to brown around the edges, about 1 minute. Pour in the balsamic vinegar, increase heat to medium-high, and simmer until the vinegar has reduced by half.
3. Thinly slice the flat iron steak across the grain, and arrange on a serving platter. Pour the reduced balsamic overtop, and sprinkle with chopped parsley to serve.

Recipe from here.

Next I did was this:

Cajun & Ginger Chicken Salad

It kinda sucks that I can't give you the exact measurements of each ingredients because I pretty much threw everything in -_- but what I used for a single serve salad were:

Ingredients

1 piece of boneless chicken breast

a pinch of salt

1 tbsp of cajun seasoning (I use McCormick's)

1 tsp of ginger powder

2 tbsp of olive oil

1/2 red onion

1 clove of garlic

salad of your choice

How to make

1. Cut the fat out of your chicken breast. I cooked mine without the skin and you can choose whether you want to slice it into thin pieces or eat the breast whole. For salad I'd say slice it into pieces. If you want a grilled chicken steak of sorts, leave it whole. Season the chicken with the salt, cajun, and ginger powder. Put it aside for about 5 to 10 minutes to let the seasoning seep in.

2. Chop the garlic and onion.

3. Warm the skillet/frying pan on medium heat with the 1 tbsp of olive oil. Saute the onion and garlic for about a minute or till the onion turns transparent and the garlic is slightly brown.

4. Put the chicken onto the skillet and close it so you let the heat cook the chicken inside out. Cook for 10 to 15 minutes (wouldn't wanna get salmonella :p). Make sure you turn it around to cook both sides.

5. Once it's done, put the chicken on the salad (if you sliced the chicken into thin pieces) / place the breast on a plate with a side of salad of your choice. The top photo was my dinner. I sliced the chicken into thin pieces and put it on top of the salad with a side of tortilla chips and hot salsa.

I'm loving cooking more and more now. I can't wait till I find the time to bake again XD 

 

Of Emotional Responses, Bandwagon Jumping and Good Intentions

I suppose you may already know the content of this blog post. If you don't, well, I don't blame you. When I finally post this entry up, the hype has died down a little and hopefully this post wouldn't come across as too emotionally driven.

But it still could be.

One morning, I was looking through my twitter feed and I realized there were a lot of retweets from Chloe Grace Moretz about #KONY2012. To be completely honest I didn't really bother checking out what it was immediately because I was still at home, no Internet and my 3G wasn't exactly that powerful to load something fast enough.

And then I was off to work. I didn't think about #KONY2012 until a colleague tweeted about it. Then I remembered to check it out.



I'm not one to keep track of what's currently trending on twitter. Frankly I don't give a shit.

When I saw the video on Vimeo, I was genuinely upset about what this man, Joseph Kony is doing to the children of Uganda. Truth be told, world issues never really had a permanent place in my mind. It was one of those come and go things because you know, I'm too busy sorting out my own shit to worry about the rest of the world.

Selfish, I know.

I didn't think twice about sharing the video with friends and family because at that time I thought it was the right thing to do. It seemed like it. I figured "okay I can't help much, but maybe spreading some kind of awareness would help in a small way". I never fancy myself as a humanitarian or an activist. I'm much too selfish and self absorbed. But kids have a special place in my heart and it's heartbreaking to see kids not being able to be kids because of some other asshole.

When people start pointing out to me about how shady Invisible Children Inc. is and how much of a self absorbed douchebag Jason Russell is, I admit to being defensive about it only because I thought the whole campaign was a good thing. But secretly I began digging into it much further.

And what I found was saddening. But I had to find out eventually through someone else, or by my own curiosity. I decided to choose the latter. The more I dug in though, I became more and more torn. Is IC the good guy or the corporate scum? I didn't know anymore.

But time will tell as more and more debate, explanations and statements come out.

Sometimes it's not about following a trend. I'm pretty sure people had good intentions. Even Jason Russell. He wanted to make something to spread awareness about this problem and regardless of what the response is, people are talking about it. The campaign, in that sense, was pulled off well.

I guess while we're on the topic of seeing both sides of the story, here are links (thanks Ganaesh)

Author Neil Gaiman has posted a bunch of informative links regarding the issue on his Tumblr which should serve as a good place to start.

Justice In Conflict has posted up a quite lengthy but thorough article.

Invisible Children, the organization behind the whole campaign, has posted up clarification about some of the questions by people all across the Internet. and I think it's only fair if they're allowed to defend themselves.

I believe IC had good intentions. But the method could be wrong. Then again, the way to hell is paved with good intentions right?

Trailer Watch: "The Bully Project - A Year In The Life of America's Bullying Crisis"

Everyone knows what bullying is but sadly, not many take action against it. It's a big deal in America and parents over there are standing up against it because sometimes it gets to a point where children can't even handle it. And growing up, kids shouldn't even have to experience something like this. Contrary to popular - albeit, stupid - beliefs, bullying is not part of growing up.

The Weinstein Company, as you may or may not know, is responsible for funding a lot of our favorite Hollywood movies. I'm looking forward to this documentary, which is due to be released on March 31st, for the sole fact that I was a bully victim.

I may not have come home with bruises or broken limbs, but bullying isn't just limited to physical violence, but as well as mental and emotional bullying. I received that. And sometimes, it isnt jut limited to the school yard.

Sadly, the Motion Picture Association of America has rated this movie R, instead of its intended audience of 13 year old. A lot of people are rallying for it to be rated as PG-13 since it could open the eyes of kids and parents, and maybe save their lives.

I get upset whenever I hear someone being bullied. No one should ever, ever go through any physical, mental and emotional torture at a place where they're supposed to learn, grow up and be kids. Not fearing to go to school.

What upsets me the most is the teachers and parents who REFUSE to see this as torment. It's always "oh kids will be kids they're just cruel at that age it's all a part of growing up". That's a lot of bull.

This documentary should be shown here in Malaysia. Before anyone says "oh that's America, it will never happen here. It's not our culture". Culture or not, bullying happens EVERYWHERE. And it's not, never was, and never will be, okay, to bully someone.

As Shinedown had sung it, "we don't have to take this, back against the wall. We don't have to take this, we can end it all".

Pinterest Pinspiration

So I kind of gotten myself into Pinterest lately and have been quite insanely repinning a lot of stuff. Here's some of the stuff I've gathered so far that I really adore!

  

Been on a 50s kick lately. Can't you tell? ;D also a lot of reds, pinks and A WHOLE LOTTA GIRLY.

Items are from: 

Zalora

Kate Spade

Unique Vintage

Supply Room

Jenna Beth Day

Nails Arts

mellow_stuff flickr

Pretty Blog

HGTV Blog

Whatever

sharonwee flickr

Martha Stewart Weddings

Groom Sold Separately

we heart it