Sucked by the Quicksand of Astro Star Quest 2009

 

Lately, I have been telling everybody that I am busy with Astro Star Quest 2009, and the first thing that comes to their mind is that I’m one of the contestants. Of course not! I wouldn’t be so foolish to join it, knowing what I am now. So, my business (busy + ness) is actually because I am supporting this amazing guy:

Alvin Chong

Initially, I only know that Astro Star Quest 2009 has started by watching it for a few minutes every Saturday night before I go out for dinner. It wasn’t until an opportunity arise that I get a million steps closer to knowing these future stars. The opportunity is as such:

Thanks to Kah Fai who made it into the Top 10 of ASQ 2009, Kar Mun who is my Foundation in Business classmate, invited me to go and support her younger brother, Kah Fai. So, I was more than happy to agree with her and went for 3 Semi-Final rounds out of the 4. On the 2nd round, I got attracted to Alvin Chong’s singing style and I took a photo with him on that night.

I guess it is fated that I started to support him and then even created a forum for him, which now became Alvin Chong’s Official Fan Club. This is the link: www.alvinchong.forumotion.com.

In the end, I have sort of lowered my support slightly towards Lan Kah Fai, though I still like him very much. I guess I should apologise to both Kah Fai and Kar Mun for being such a traitor. But thanks to both of you, I get to know Alvin too.

So, I started watching ASQ live performance from Top 10 to Top 5. Below are the photos of me at the Astro studio:

  Top 10

Top 9

(My parents didn’t allow me to go for the 3rd semi-final round. So, I missed seeing Justin’s and Billy’s last appearance on stage)

 Top 6

 Top 5

More photos of me during the trips:

 

3 Different Jojo Styles (Missed the golden one)

Dinner at Overseas Restaurant, thanks to Kar Mun’s Mum

 

With the composer contestants

 

Do you think the left guy on both pictures look alike??

Finally we have a group photo of Foundation in Business classmates!

With the siblings who I knew them separately (Meng Jiun & Sheen Yeen)

With Xiu Bao

With Wan Yi

Justin, the most friendly contestant who has the best vocal too among the guys

SPY, who has a very strong voice, able to compete with Jaclyn Victor’s

Chuu Chuu, found out that she’s a very good friend of Elsa Lam

 

Yean, who wrote a song to Nicholas Teo, named Shuo Ni Ye Yi Yang Ai Zhe Wo

Alvin Chong!! You should know who is he by now

Kah Fai, supporting him too in the finals

On 8th July 2009, the Top 5 had a Conference Session at Sungei Wang, and I was there to get their autographs and my VIP tickets to the Grand Finale tonight!

The colourful theme and the black theme of their exclusive photos

I went to Sungei Wang, Times Square and Pavilion on that day with Meng Jiun, Shan Lung, Alex Loh and Yew Wooi. Jeff Law Yew Wooi is the an Alvin's fan who I met in the forum which I created.

 

The 2 emcees that will appear on the Grand Finale

  

Top 5 singing their new singles one by one (Kah Fai, Alvin, Min, Ryan, Yoke)

The banner which Yew Wooi spent much effort doing for Alvin!

   

Answering question session

  Autograph session (notice Alvin’s head really look like a small boy here)

Session ends

  Alvin departing to China

Finally, I get to take 1 photo with Isaac!! And Justin too

After that, we went to Pavilion. These are some photos taken over there:

At the SALE display of Pavilion

 

This is Pavilion, which is a first time for some of us

 

The beautiful art creation in front of Pavilion

 

The Black Fours …

 

… including me

 

Final picture of the day –> The Silver Statue (It’s a man, by the way)

This is an extremely long post because I compiled all my ASQ experiences here, except for the Grand Finale which I’m going to attend later. So once again, congrats for reading this far. You are on your way to becoming a blogworm.

A Volcanic Blast of Fun at Awana, Genting

This brings back memories as it was on 18th April 2009 that we students of February 2009 Intake, University of South Australia spent great time together.

It was a one day trip to the base of the mountain by 100+ students of Taylor’s for Team Building. I bet you all can imagine how fun it is to play games and activities with hundreds of people and most of those people are your friends!

  

It is always usual that teenagers like us become amused with that harness which has an obvious effect on the appearance of “something”. As you can see, Khai Jake and Alex Loh were trying the reliability of that harness.

My group’s first game was Flying Fox, the name where most people will mistaken it as Firefox. The first photo is Shi Chi getting ready to take off; second was Wilson enjoying his 1.5 times of playing it when everybody only had 1 chance; third was the thing that I hated because I was standing there waiting for my turn and they get to play cards just because they were before me (anyway, it’s still acceptable since they are not playing in the Genting Casino but just at the base of Genting).

 

After that, I had some free time. Then, we started camwhoring. First picture is Xiu Bao, Christy Tan, me and Alex who are all my group members. Second picture is me with Christy and Yee Von (look at the stairs-like heights). Third picture is the two best pals, Brian Chong and Benjamin Michael who are my classmates for Semester 1. Fourth is us with Kaylie on the top. Last one includes Shan Lung.

 

These are some of my Semester 1 classmates who are all very friendly. Those haven’t mentioned in my blog are Teong Jin, Mary Yap and Veronica on the right. Besides Alex and Shan Lung, they were my S1 classmates. We were waiting at the indoor car park area for our next game. What a bad place to wait, right?

In this photo, we have Veronica’s hair, Brian’s head, Nicholas Yong, me, TJ, J-Tsen, Haw Yang and a person who is under that dark spot, making it hard to be identified.

These photos are our next activity, abseiling. 1st – me, 2nd – Yee Von, 3rd - Jo Jin, 4th Alex. We waited very long for this. And so, I have to satisfy myself by trying twice – once facing backwards like the rest of the people, and second facing forward which was really scary. I tripped on the more dangerous one, and almost rolled down. But I made it down safely!

Guess it’s not too late to introduce my group, Team 4. We have an extremely friendly and fun advisor, Ms Pei Chuin who is still very young, just like us. From the top left, we have Wilson, me, Jordan, Jake, Xiu Bao, Christy, Amily, Xue Wei, Jo Jin, Shi Chi, Ms Pei Chuin and Alex. I was the partially helpful team leader, and Alex was the one who helped me with the other half of being a cheerful motivator. Everyone was good and I seriously need to thank you all for working together and being united till we can get a lucky 2nd place among all the 10 teams!

First photo – Freestyle; second – FOUR; third – formal.

Why is this here? It’s because at the changing room, I got to know that some of my college friends were about to attend that concert on 2nd May 2009 which was my sister’s birthday too.  Coincidentally, Shan Lung was bringing Wei Qi to the concert, and Nicholas Yong said he would be alone at the Sony Ericsson section. Fortunately, I was also been offered a seat at that section, so we went there together. My dad accompanied my sister at the paid section.

Here, I would like to thank a very good friend of mine who was kind enough to sponsor me a ticket to the Lee Hom Music-Man Concert. His name is:

ANG WEE HONG

Without him, I would not be able to experience the best concert that I have been after Jolin Tsai’s and Jay Chou’s. Thanks, dude!

A Thunderstorm-like of Applause

After all the stressful assignments are done, I finally got back my time to blog about events which happened more than a month ago. Can anybody recalled Taylor’s Academic Excellence Award 2009 which is now nothing more than a piece of history?

I just want to thank all my dear friends to participated in the standing ovation when I collected these awards:

• Accounting I Book Prize
• Accounting II Book Prize
• Economics I Book Prize
• Economics II Book Prize
• Business Mathematics Book Prize
• Business Statistics Book Prize
• Business Computing Book Prize
• Dean’s List Award
• Best Student Award

I know I shouldn’t brag about this, but this is just to inform other parties such as my teachers who didn’t know about this that I did not disappoint you.

Alright, I think we should just let the photos do the talking since it was so long ago.

 With Lisa Mok

With Billy Ooi

With Kevin Tan & Heng Luen

With Wei Liem

  My Foundation in Business classmates

    With some of 3.1s

With Nicole Chua

With some of the 3.2s

With half of the January 2008 Intake Dean’s List Recipients

However, bad news always comes along with good news. On that time, I just realised that I FAILED in getting Taylor’s World Class Scholarship once AGAIN! It sounds so ironic that the Best Student of Taylor’s very own Business Foundation course is not eligible for Taylor’s summit of reward.

But like I’d said, bad events always have their good side-effects. Since I am not obligated to stay with Taylor’s anymore which is also what they wanted in the first place, I’ve decided to credit transfer to University of Western Australia next February. So now I’m scouting for friends who have the same frequency as me and hope we can all go together in as a group. Just for your information, I’ll be doing Bachelor of Commerce (majoring in Finance and Economics) over there. Feel free to tell me by all means if you’re interested or would like to know more about my target!

Enjoying the Rareness of a Malaysian Blizzard

Can anybody guess where this is?

 

I suppose I have scared off half of my readers with my previous lengthy, dull and lack-of-visuals posts. But not to worry, the upcoming posts will be back to normal – photo spamming again.

This post shall be about my first class outing with my University of South Australia 1.10 classmates, since I failed to attend the steamboat buffet party due to my tuition. Well, credit goes to Teong Jin for organising another great successful event for the class.

First, we started off with Dim Sum at USJ 21. This was rare as I seldom eat Dim Sum; in fact, I never eaten them with my friends before. To my surprise, he not only invited the present classmates of ours, but also other course mates and our last year’s classmates.

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So that were just some of the photos we have taken at the restaurant. The business owner must have felt overwhelming when he saw such a big group of 30 college students roaming into his premise. The humorous thing is that he asked us have we just finished tuition at one of the nearby tuition centres. Do we really look like afternoon session high school teens,or even worse, primary school kids?  Anyway, we had plenty of fun feasting with long-time-no-see friends and present classmates.

Next would be the blast when most of us went to Sunway Pyramid. And so, four cars led by the insane Haw Yang, Shan Lung the womaniser, veteran Teong Jin and the motherly car owner Sim Ee raced to the destination through several different directions, just like in the movie of Fast and Furious 4.

When we reached there, our group split into half whereby some want to watch Marley and Me, and the other half prefer to indulge themselves at Red Box. I guess you should have known me by now and I don’t think I even need to clarify which I have chosen.

Once we reached Red Box, our already-divided group has been separated into another two parts: English songs room and Chinese songs room. Guess what was my decision this time? If I you have thought that I would go into one of the rooms only, you are indeed wrong. I know I was greedy because all along, I always monopolise the microphone, just like Zheng Yang. But that was only in one room. Now, I was actually taking control of two rooms and I just shifted myself from one room to another when my songs are in turn. So basically, I synchronised all the order of the songs in my favour and sang non-stop from 1pm to 4pm. This was not even rare, because I never had a chance to sing in two rooms simultaneously before.

Thanks to Haw Yang who triggered me into yelling and shouting during Shake It, I almost lost my voice and I can’t talk loudly for a day. I do hope everybody enjoyed despite me monopolising every end of Red Box. I also want to apologise to Tien Jiun for being late an hour when you can actually finish singing all the Jay Chou songs by then. This was my first time seeing Nicholas and Benedict going out of their mind along with the rhythm of Please Don’t Stop The Music, my classic. On the other hand, Kaylie and Jo Ee were busy doing their duets in the other room. I feel really sorry for Kar Mun who fell sick on such a occasional day and was unable to join us due to that. Here are some photos of our KTV Party and lastly, a video of our final song of the day inserted for your pleasure (or more like Welcome to Hell).

View Full Album

 

Video recorded by Kaylie. Sorry for the sound defects because the zooming does not record sounds. Maybe you all should hope that the whole video is muted so that you don’t even need to listen to my extremely out-of-tune voice at all.

 Photos snapped by Haw Yang who has a camera phobia (Shin Yi, 2009), inside and outside Sunway Pyramid’s mirror lift despite the fact that we were already late for class.

What’s even rare was that I actually skipped Marketing PASS (Peer Assisted Study Session) because of all these. Since we spent too much time calculating our individual bills for the singing, we left Sunway at 4pm (the time when our Management Block Lecture begins). By the time Haw Yang found parking right in front of Taylor’s Main Campus, it was already 4.20pm. Therefore, this became the next rare occurrence because I was only severely late for lectures once. Professor Luke Faulkner, the South Australian lecturer greeted us by saying something similar to ‘better late than never’ and ‘thanks for coming’. All thanks to KTV! This is my phrase of the day:

NO MATTER WHERE WE ARE, OUR SINGING SPIRIT SHALL NEVER DIE!

What’s worse is that the other gang was still watching Marley and Me when we arrived at the Lecture Theatre. What a long movie! Maybe we should start naming our class the Class of Tardiness. Eventually, they arrived around 10 minutes after we came and Prof Luke repeated the same words again.

I guess that’s all for my first class outing where so many first happenings occurred on that day. I really do hope our class which has only a lifespan of 4 months will be able to gather like that every once in a while, even after it dies.

Rushing into a Self-conjured Hurricane

At last, my study break has arrived and finally do I have a peace of mind in writing all the posts for the events which happened throughout this hectic month of April. So prepare for a continuous range of deferred posts which I shall be blogging on.

At the beginning of this month, I was really busy with my Accounting Test and also both my Financial Management and Introduction to Management assignments. The tenseness was so immense that there was not a single sign of fooling around on April Fool’s Day. The worst thing which happened to me during that first week was completing my Management assignment. It was scary because I finished it at the last minute. The fact of doing an assignment when I’m oblivious of the deadline is sickening as my heart kept beating fast as every second elapsed. This state of oblivion was due to the confusion caused as I don’t know whether to follow the Malaysian time zone or Adelaide’s. Furthermore, the daylight savings had recently adjusted Adelaide’s time zone and I can’t even tell the the time difference between these two places. As I panicked through the failure of submitting it using Mozilla Firefox, I was enlightened and out of the blue, I decided to use Internet Explorer which I never touch it before. Thank God it succeeded and best still, I handed up an hour earlier before the deadline.

After all the rushing of assignments, I had to go through a supposedly unrelated business to me – preparing for exams on the second week of April. But I’m not the one sitting for them, why should I even care? I could have spent all my time getting ready for the Taylor’s World Class Scholarship interview and won’t have to screw it like now. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t put blame on other things when I fail something. So anyway, teaching my sister and my students are part of my responsibilities, especially during their exam week. This perfectly suits the title of this post, whereby I had been too ignorant to set up a trap for myself AND I even entered the trap voluntarily knowing the danger and risks of it.

At least I survived all of them except for the scholarship interview. But whatever! Now, I get to do my twinning programme or even a credit transfer in the near future. So the day that I have been waiting and planning for had finally arrived, which is the Friday right after all their exams and my interview were over. Fast and Furious 4 with Boon Kuang!! Because of this movie, I get to experience driving through one of the heaviest rainstorms which I ever encountered in my life, and to make things worse, I was heading to a destination (KTM, Subang Jaya) which I didn’t know the way. However, I still believe that experience was worthwhile because it led me to another first-time occurrence – a movie at the THX Theatre of Gold Screen Cinemas, Summit USJ.

Although Fast and Furious 4 was slightly below my high expectations, it’s still a good show and I give it a 7.5 over 10 rating. The best part of this film was the GPS System used when they race on the usual roadway. The computerised technology used throughout the race track spiced the movie up a bit for me, and it changed my impression on the lameness of the GPS Road Navigator which I am currently using and SELLING!

Clicking on the photo above will direct you to a range of GPS products which I am selling. They are really helpful for Klang Valley road users especially because they provide extremely detailed road directions and maps which will definitely lead users to their destinations safely. They also possess the ability to scan for roads out of their systems when users do not obey the directions provided, and they would adapt the shortcuts and pathways that users normally use out of their habits. Besides that, there are optional features such as a built-in camera connected to the back of the car to show the rear view which would assist in parking. All in all, just feel free to drop by my official website, www.chinwynn.com for more information and questions can be directed to me as well through email.

And that’s all for the first half of my April.  Despite not being able to attend David Archuleta’s showcase at Sunway’s Amphitheatre which so many of my friends went whether they are my high school friends or college course mates, I dare say I’m satisfied since I was able to release all my stress through watching a movie which I have been waiting for more than a month with my best pal. Listen here, Boon Kuang. I sacrificed this show for you even though all of my classmates were about to watch it with me on the following week. Sadly, I had to reject all the invitations but I’m grateful that I watched it with you.

Taking a Break from a Tsunami Named Work

It’s been a month since I updated my blog, and I dare say during these 28 days, my life really experienced a drastic change. Right after the Sports Day, I started my Bachelor of Applied Finance AND I finally got my self-owned white MyVi. I seriously can’t believe I am in university now AND i own a petrol-consuming vehicle. I guess these are the significations of me turning into an 18-year old adult.

 

So let’s start off with the shorter one, which is possessing a car. The day I got my car is also the day I announced my independence! It’s as if I get to go anywhere I want as long as I know the directions without the control of my parents. Before this, I had to get permission from them in order to visit my friends; and the worst thing was they had to send me there, which I don’t like it as I would feel guilty and tired of their complaints (not like I don’t get to hear them yelling at me thinking I’m still a new driver though). That’s why I wasn’t very sociable in my school days and I had few friends since I’m staying really deep inside the unreachable Bukit Rimau enclosed guardhouse area. Even my friends always complain that they had to undergo complicated and unnecessary procedures before getting into my house.

NOT ANYMORE NOW!!

Lately, I became so sociable that I drive to my friends’ houses and also take them around the lovely neighbourhood almost everyday. Because I have transport, I even offered tuition to my friends and I can’t express how much I love teaching people. So, any Form4’s who needs ADD MATHS, CHEMISTRY or ACCOUNTS tuition can feel free to register through me.

The only drawback of owning a car is about the maintenance of it. Since it’s a new car, I got to be really careful in my driving, not to knock onto anything and depreciate my car badly. And since it’s white in colour, I have to clean it often and I really spent lots of time washing and wiping it because it gets really dirty and black especially when it rains and the dust sticks after the rainwater dries up (how I hate the person for insisting to buy white since it’s the cheapest colour that Perodua can offer, and due of that I have to spend so much of my precious time washing the car).

 

Next would be the influence of university education on a person who takes things so seriously. That’s me, of course. Degree course is so different compared to my previous foundation. There’s no more spoon-feeding by lecturers, and the lecture notes provided are all too simplified. This means we have to go through the immensely thick text books in order to extract information for our learning. This isn’t very pleasant because I read books slowly and I have to waste so many hours just to complete a chapter.

Thanks to Marketing, I have to utilise my whole Sunday just to study for its quiz which happens every Monday. Therefore, my weekend is gone: half spent on completing homework, another half spent on studying for the quiz and washing MyVi.

Besides the overload of work given to me, I have to cope with some kind of anonymous force which constantly directs a tide of waves of people assuming I’m the know-it-all geek. It’s just my second week and supposedly, nobody knows who I am in university. However, it seems that half of my new classmates come seeking me for guidance and directions on academic purposes. Is my personality too obvious or is someone out there spreading rumours about me? I really don’t know.

IT’S NOT LIKE I DISLIKE HELPING PEOPLE, IT’S JUST THAT I NEED TO KNOW THE REAON BEHIND IT, THAT’S ALL. SO DON’T MISUNDERSTAND!

Now, I sort of understand why certain people would prefer living far away from the city or more like away from their jobs. BECAUSE experiencing a life of 24-7 answering questions through SMS and MSN about work (studies in my case) non-stop is so suffocating!

The only thing I enjoyed at Taylor’s now is the fact that Li Jhuin is always studying and this at least proved that I’m not the only nerd who studies during breaks.

THANKS FOR BEING MY COMPANION, LI JHUIN!

 

And so, I came up with the plan of using the advantage of my new car to overcome the disadvantage of my university life. To take a break from what I described as the Tsunami of work, my solution was to hang-out with friends who I don’t need to mention “work”. Basically, they are my juniors but I prefer to acknowledge them as my good buddies because I feel stress-free when they are around.

Last week was the best because it was school holidays. Although they weren’t mine, I still get to spend more time with them compared to when they are not having their holidays. Furthermore, action-pack movies have become part of my stress-reliever and it’s so fun watching with “non-colleagues”.

 

So, this was the first movie I watched since the commencement of my degree with my family – Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li. My rating would be 5 out of 10 for this. This is a show rated 18PL, which means for viewers aged 18 and above with a combination of two or more elements, ie. a program with excessive sex-scenes and excessive violence. My mum was offended when she found out about this because she thought that it would be a waste of money since my sister isn’t 18 (neither am I yet). I just told her that it would be alright, and it eventually did at AEON Bukit Tinggi’s TGV Screens.

This movie is well below my expectations because I was expecting half of the scenes to be filled with fighting and in-game character skills. This was totally opposite from what had been described at the viewer’s review shown in The Sun. Unfortunately, nothing much turned out and I was severely disappointed.

I also don’t see a reason why they rate it 18PL when there are no explicit scenes. That misleading rating kept me preparing for those moments when I would feel intimidated and not know how to react whenever I sit beside my parents. So I guess my first above-18 movie experience can’t be considered as one, sadly.

 

The second movie I got to watch was Dragonball Evolution. It looks like I am a fanatic of game movies but I’m not actually. Just so coincidentally I decided to watch this movie when none’s at the right time. This is one of my best enjoyable moments as I get to go somewhere after class with my best pal, Calvin Soh Boon Kuang. This occurred on last Wednesday right after Accounting lecture. I was so looking forward to this when I can test my driving skills in taking a first-time trip to Sunway Pyramid and coming home safely.

My ratings for this movie is 8 out of 10, which is an A1. Speaking of this reminds me of SPM and congrats to all SPM 2008 scorers. Back to Dragonball, it consists of more amazing fighting scenes, rather than just fists and kicks. Moreover, it has a better storyline than the other movie. Most of all, watching it with Calvin and spending the whole afternoon there was the best.

Surprisingly, we met quite a number of Kota Kemuning students appearing around Sunway, such as Alex Oh and his gang, Benjamin Lim, Wei Yoong, Mary, Amanda and her cousin brother who I can’t remember his name. It’s as if Sunway Pyramid is the only hang-out venue for KK teens.

This is the exciting trailer for the movie.

 

This is the next movie that I watched on the next day, Wanted 2008. I know this movie is slightly outdated, but the ratings are the best as I would give 9 out of 10 for it, partially thanks to its creativity in bullet shooting and its violence. I watched this at Chee Hong’s (high school acquitance who’s actually my neighbour) house on Thursday. My original intention was to help him update his computer after all our effort of reformatting each other’s computers for weeks. But cool, he downloaded the whole High Definition video through Ares and I get to watch this stupendous movie with him. I would say this show as a must-watch for those who haven’t watch this 1 year old movie yet. Not to forget, there’s Angelina Jolie in it, and she’s really “hot and cool” there.

Here’s the trailer which shows less than 10% of the actions in this movie.

 

After that day, I thought I was back to my reality life of studies till their next holidays. But I was quite wrong when I get to have some fun time with my tuition students after our Add Maths class. Amanda, Mary, Elaine, my sister and I  went for a drive around my Bukit Rimau neighbourhood seeing all the beautiful bungalows and we dropped by the Matahari clubhouse which is relatively small compared to Kota Permai, the one they usually go. Nevertheless, they seemed to like the swimming pool slides as it is the one and only features that Kota Permai doesn’t possess. It was really hillarious when we sang Right Now (Na, Na, Na) together in the car until I sent by sister off to Cikgu Tan’s class.

 

That is all for my dreams in reality, and I got to get back to work aka studies. Thanks to Alex Loh for introducing Windows Live Writer, making it much for convenient for uploading photos and videos during blogging.

Wishing everyone (school students back to school; SPM leavers into their new intakes; degree students rushing for their assignments)  happy studying, including myself!!

 

P/S: Sorry for the lack of visual media this time! And congrats for reading this far, haha.