It's 4am now.

I was packing my luggage just now at 10pm and I was thinking about something.

Earlier in the day at 6pm, I had a Skype call with one of my profiles - He was the band manager of a Swedish band called Brothers Among Wera. After the call, I got a sense of how much that band struggles to try and get to where it hopes to eventually reach - which is a breakthrough in their career. They play music for free, talk about gigs that they were excited for which few people came for eventually and how they don't make much but try to get along in life. Hearing all this... I realise how damn bloody tough a musician's life is. You work for passion, and you don't know where it leads you to, but you work for it. So easy to lose faith. And now I know why many musicians end up doing what they're associated with - drugs and all that jazz. Talking about stereotypical musicians in general, not this band. Being a musician... you don't know where the hell it'll lead you to, and life is not beautiful because there isn't $$$. But musicians continue to do what they do, because they have passion for the music they produce. New found respect. Not only that, I also learnt... making music isn't all that glamourous. Quite depressing in fact.

I got stressed thinking about this. Why?

Because I was thinking of the documentary. My team and I had sort of confirmed another band to profile already and it's ridiculous to have 2 bands in one documentary talking about the same thing.

So I am stuck in a position that I have to cut one of them out. But that is so tough!!!!! I can't do this. My poor heart isn't strong enough to tell someone we can't have you in our film.

I really love the other band's profile as well. (it's super important to have strong profiles because they'll give you good quotes. and their energy radiates through the screens) She's so honest in what she says and I absolutely love her personality. Furthermore, she has a compelling story - a mom, has a day job and has to juggle with all these aspects in life on top of her music career. I spoke to her on Skype too and have already told her when filming will be done, etc.

But here I am, stuck with 2 bands, and I will have to decide who has to make the cut. Sigh.. I can never be a judge on reality contests coz I can't bear to do this. It almost feels like you're dashing people's dreams ya know. Not easy being a bitch. Gotta give it to Simon Cowell.

I was quite stressed about this, so while I was packing my luggage, I kinda snapped at my mom coz she was so naggy and I was already so pre-occupied and absent minded.... that having to deal with external malware Is Cannot. I knew she was trying to help, and do her job as a mother to make sure I have everything ready for travel, but aiyo, I rather not have the help if I'm troubling you. (she was tryna get the luggage out for me and she comprain her hand pain. really? then dont helppp, tell you already!)

After I raised my voice at her, she went back to her room and played Candy Crush lol and sat silently. I felt bad duh coz afterall, she was doing what every good mother would do. So I mustered the courage and apologised to her (yes it takes a lot of courage to say sorry ya know). She said, "no lah you never shout at me what". That means she's ok. And she was back to nagging at me after that haha.


So here I am, having to decide which band to make the cut.

I have quite a few factors to weigh. And I don't have much time. Flying TONIGHT man. Gotta talk it out with my teammates but ultimately, someone has to do the dirty deed.


Anyway, I've one shoot to do at 9:30am soon in Singapore. Yay. And look at the time, Yay. Yay me.

No sleep everyday from now till end of October I tell you.

Here are the 2 bands: very very different genre of music for both. And I have my obvious bias for one of them. But my team mates like the other. Sigh, I'm minority.






If you manage to guess which band's music I like more, then, The Queen (me) shall knight you Her Majesty's good stead.

Ahhh so sorry for the lack of updates!!!! Been so damn bloody busy.
And yes, it is THIS Friday that I will be flying to Stockholm ahhh!!!! 26th of September.

Yeah, I can't believe the day has finally come. After so many months of prep... I'm still doing last minute prep for Stockholm. Up till the day that I fly to Stockholm, there's so much stuff to do and I hope my video team will be able to find suitable profiles and be prepared with everything that we plan to do.

Anyways, we'll be tackling the issue of music streaming - how sustainable it will be in the future and whether it is truly better than days of rampant piracy in Sweden. We still got loadsa stuff to prepare. But the best thing of our video is that... because we're doing a documentary on music, I'll get to interview Swedish bands and singers!!!! AHHHH!!! That's awesome right?? ; )

But. So much work to do as of now.

And I would love to blog one last post on Friday before I fly at 11:30pm. I'll try my best.

Can't believe it, I'm exciteddddd. Surely shit will crop up while we're there but I think it's all worth the experience and I'm gonna soak and learn everything I can.

You guys have seen me dream about this very trip - right from the start when I was going to apply for it. The day has finally come for me to head to Sweden.

I'll be back with stories and wonderful pictures ; )

CIAO CIAO FOR NOW NOW!

So it was 3am and I didn't wanna sleep yet coz I felt I hadn't done enough to call it a day.

Decided to watch some videos for inspiration for the documentary that my team and I are gonna have to produce in Sweden. I remember watching this remix, rehashed version of Coldplay's "Paradise" earlier in the day, and I really loved it so I decided to watch it again.




It's freakin amazing!!! Somehow, the African theme fits this song so damn well.
Very powerful song, love the vibes. And..

THE VIEW. Omg, so bloody spectacular. And how the bloody hell did they manage to get that piano up there in the first place???!



So I watched the behind-the-scenes footage:





Initially I was daunted by the duration of the video, but...
I was hooked in its entirety, from start to end. I'm so inspired by this whole thing!!!

I am in so much awe of Americans' gutsiness and spontaneity. Seriously, ONE DAY before the shoot, they discovered this fantastic location. Like WHERE THE HELL did they find a helicopter?? Omg. All these crazy things just happened and they jumped on it. They didn't even stop to think and analyse, critically, about how to go about doing this. Ok, I'm sure they did. But they never seriously thought about the risks? What if someone falls, dies, and technicality wise - is the lighting good? Will they get what they want? Their unpreparedness was clear when they talked about how nobody thought about bringing food and water up even after realising they'd be isolated somewhere atop a cliff. Seriously?! But at the end of the day, everyone's so happy and enthused and psyched up! That's damn amazing, I love their positivity and enthusiasm. I can actually feel it through the video. Their mentality: The do-before-think. I'm just simply wow-ed by the SPONTANEITY of it all. It's amazing. Love it. Speechless.

After a while I thought... Omg, this is actually really relevant to the docu we'll be producing.

This is our pitch and idea for the documentary:

We're gonna be tackling Sweden's music industry. Since music streaming like Spotify originated from Sweden and is taking the music world by storm by powering the future of music, we decided to do something related to music and technology. Mainly music streaming, esp since Spotify is gaining traction here in Singapore.

After pitching this idea to our supervisor, we're currently in the midst of conceptualising the idea. I've approached and emailed a few Swedes to be our profiles. One has gotten back to me and he's keen. I did a pre-interview with him yesterday via Skype - for some reason it's kinda nerve wrecking? But anyway, he's good to go as our profile. He's a pianist and has his views about music streaming.

A pianist.

And here I am, watching a video about "The Piano Guys". It all fits. Or I choose to see it that way (can't take it away from me) and that I was meant to watch this video hahahaha. I'm easily inspired by things around me and get excited so just let me be~

I'm glad I watched it, I'm excited. It has really made me... excited.

Taught me a couple of things about production: I think it's so important to learn to let things flow. Uncertainty is scary to me, if I don't have control over production, I fluster because I feel like I don't get the stuff I want and might get stressed.

But watching these Americans and how gutsy they are and how spontaneous they go about doing things as they produced this music video tells me that sometimes, we just gotta go with the rhythm of things. (Sorry about the pun haha. I'm gonna come up with another) And let it take its course and not try to tune everything to what I think should be the desired outcome. Sometimes, beauty unravels by itself in its uncertainty.

Ahhh.. so poetic. But wow, thanks Piano Guys, you made my evening. Or rather dusk. Have a great day, reader.

My mom's turning 60 in a month. Yeah 6-0. She'd kill me if she knew people knew her age hahaha.

And dad's not too far behind. 57.

Staying here at my aunt's place, away from home, away from my family, makes me think about them.

I think there really isn't much time left on Earth to spend with them. A decade or more and I'd start to risk losing them. In fact, I'm starting to feel like my time with them is slowly slipping away...

My parents are putting old people's oilment now. The kind of oilment that old men and women would use for aching joints and pains. It never occurred to me that they'd start using it anytime soon. I see the white hairs, the groans of pain when they walk or stretch. Aches me a little.

Sometimes, I think about problems. Then I think about my parents. And losing them. My problems suddenly appear so small.

Sometimes, I wonder about life's decisions. Whether or not I should go overseas to work. But I know I'll be losing precious time with them and there really isn't much left.

Sometimes, I imagine myself whispering to them how much they mean to me, but alas, my inhibitions pull me back and I don't act the way I want to.

And when the time comes to let go, I'm afraid it'll all be a little too late.

Every moment, every laugh, every joke that fills the house - I try to remember. Even their voices. I must admit, every time I try to conjure their voices in my head, I can't remember how they sound like and I feel a little guilty. I don't know why either. I remember how everyone else sounds like, but them. Strange eh?

And....

This is gonna be a bit heavy.


And Sometimes, I question why God would want us to love Him above everyone else. I can't imagine loving my parents any less than Him. I love them as much. I don't know how Christians can surrender themselves to Him. Difficult isn't it?

I will always remember the biblical story of Abraham and his son. He's about to kill his son when he's interrupted by an Angel and instead, sacrifices a lamb. Why does God need Abraham to prove his love to Him by killing his own child? I really don't understand why.

Unless they're all mere stories?


Apologies for bringing in religion but ya get what I mean.

I wonder if Christians question these things, coz I do, all the time. Maybe it's because I fear God or fear the unknown. But there are some things that I really can't put my finger to or understand. They say Faith is all someone needs, but put together with logic, the equation doesn't add up. I scratch my head.

Why would God send parents to us who care and nurture us, but tell us that we can't love em as much? People become empty shells when people around them die.

It really is quite a cruel world here.

These are just one of the 101 million things that I'd only find out when I die.

The first picture was those ballsey things that I was telling you guys about that we all painstakingly filled with water and hung one by one.

And that tote bag is probably the first tote bag that I really properly like and has meaning to it. Can you see the Sweden word, the last one? Yeap, it's all the 10 countries that Go-Far has been to, in the past decade. In fact, 11 coz in 2005 they went to 2 countries to cover the Tsunami devastation that happened one year after, Aceh and Sri Lanka.

If there is one country that I can choose to go... Any country at all in the past 10 years, that would be Bhutan. Argh.. to me, that's the most exotic? I love countries with beautiful mountains. I'm thinking of going on a grad trip to all these countries bordering China and India. Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia. AHHH!!!! I wantttt. Does anyone wanna come along with me? I intend to hike mountains hahaha.


Anyway, I digress,

Here were the people!





It was a really awesome, spectacular party. I enjoyed myself a lot even though it was mostly standing, mingling and pulling tables.

The food, the drinks were delicious. I tell you, I had one of my best meals ever!??! Maybe I was really hungry but the beef, fish and chicken!??! ALL DAMN GOOD WTFFFF argh. OneParadise is the food caterer if you're wondering.

I don't take food photos unfortunately.

Oh btw, these pictures were taken by my talented photog friends on the team. Hariz and Pei Lin. Not me. I can never reproduce memories in such beautiful stills.

Also,

Here's the video that my video team mates and I painstakingly did up the last few weeks :')
So glad they laughed at parts where they were supposed to laugh lol. So thankful these 4 alumni were so willing to be part of the video!!!! Really very thankful. I saw the couple squirming in their seats while watching I felt so bad for them haha.




Wheee hoooo.

It was great testing ground before our actual trip to Sweden. Like it tested out how we could work with one another and improve our video making skills etc. So even though it was hard work, I am happy to have done it and used it as a platform to test waters.

I'm proud of it!! But as all things are, IT CAN BE BETTER.

I remember for the first shoot, I hadn't had ample rest after internship before getting started on it. So, I was damn tired. But at least it's done and over now.

There are things I would change after watching it again, but.. that's just perfectionism screaming.


All in all, I was really happy during the party.

I talked to a few seniors, in particular the 2012 and 2013 video groups. I dunno why but I somehow gravitated towards them. And I heard about their stories while overseas.

A lot of my seniors miss school a lot and I kept asking them, why? Coz I couldn't really understand WHY they liked school so much and missed it to bits. They were so excited to see how the school looked like after a few years and it was pretty funny seeing how excited they were. And one of them said something that really hit me when I asked them why they missed school so much and that was,

"When I'm in school, I feel like I can do ANYTHING"

I think it's true because in school, you can make mistakes and you dare to do a lot of things that probably work would not allow. The opportunities to do things were pretty endless. Like going overseas to report.. that's something only seasoned reporters in the real world would ever get a chance to. But here in school, opportunities are rife! You really can do anything! It is here in school when you can afford to make mistakes and do many things.

Having heard that, I kinda feel like I need to appreciate school life when I still can... Not much time left, but I'll try to savour every moment of it.


This coming 26th of September, THIS IS IT. I'm really flying to Stockholm ahhhhh!!!!

There's still so much more preparation to do I don't feel ready yet. We haven't firmed up our profiles and called anyone proper. And there isn't much time. Exactly 3 weeks omg. That's crazy!!! I tell you time will fly and I'm gonna be breathing Scandinavia air and seeing blonde hair blue eyed people walking by me hahaha.

Whatever it is, it's insane to think that I'm really doing this. Something I've been wishing to do for so long.

Dampened every now and then by worries and thinking about the 101 million things that might not happen for us while we are there. Or whether we'd even have anything to film by the time we're at Stockholm. It's gonna be crazeh.

But, really, I gotta take one step at a time. And motivate myself to get things done.

So much uncertainty, but I guess that's something that should drive me too. Life of a journalist. Always on the move, never settling.


Besides Go-Far, my school life, which is essentially my life in general, also revolves around FYP and Media Law.

A lot of uncertainty with FYP too, not sure if our idea on Halfway Houses would work. Faith should be accompanied by logic and sensibility. So I'm really pulling all of my team mates' skills to get this goinnn'.

Media Law is so exciting. I love Media Law. I told my friends that.. If I were a more astute and quick thinker, I would've studied Law at NUS.

Unfortunately, my brain isn't wired that way. And I don't have perfect memory - An asset that should come with every law student. But I don't find the concepts boring. Applying them to real life cases, is so exciting! And that is largely thanks to an awesome Professor, Dr. Cenite who is a fantastic lecturer. I dare say one of the best in school. Very good at facilitating conversation during class and I've never been so engaged in my entire school life. 2 hours fly by no kidding.

What's best? It's not a 9am class. I can never be awake during 9am classes. It's at a fantastic time slot at 11:30am on Mondays and 12:30pm on Tuesdays. How not to love???


As we head nearer to the end of the month, my posts will become irregular and shorter. So bear with me ya.

Mid-terms on the 15th. And loadsa prep to go~ Let's go.