So two days ago I received this email:



WAAAHOOOOOO!!!!!

Yet another selection for a documentary competition. This time.. in Switzerland :'D
This film festival is a really niche one - targeted at Science, with the theme of 'Convergence' this year. Didn't really look much into it but thought our docu was quite relevant so I just went ahead with submission.

Didn't think that.......... AHHHH!!!!!!!

I read the first line of the email with bated breath and then when it came to the second line, I shrieked. Woohoo, Stream Dream has been selected yawww.

And just when I was about to type this blog post, I received another email from them asking me to wetransfer to them our film~ So here I am, wetransferring it at the moment as I type this blog post.


It's crazy man, and feels so good to be able to have our film recognised by these film festivals! Currently waiting for approval for funds to head to Barcelona : ) 75% funded by the school. For each project, we can only apply for one trip so it's not like we can go to Switzerland on the school's budget as well haha. Suckin them dry man hahahaah.

Really hope the school approves our application asap so that I can confirm with the Spaniards our hotel rooms. I checked that some of the rooms are already taken during the time that we'll be there through their website??? So hope all goes well!


Oh how I wish I can remain excited foreverrrr. It was exhilarating receiving that email on Tuesday. But the next day I was all over it and it was back to real life. I get over these things pretty fast. I want to live in euphoria 4evaaaa and sadness begone 4evaaaa. My perfect Utopia~

Didn't announce this on Facebook this time, coz it's bragging and seriously, NOBUDDEH CARES LAH! "Aiyo, must announce how many times these people?!" they'd be thinkin. So I ain't gon stuff it down their facez.

But you guyssss, I will share everything I possibly am willing to disclose here : )



Anywayz, for FYP, we're getting close to the end of our shoots. I think all of us can't wait to finish it and get started with editing.

I think the fact that it has been so long-drawn, my enthusiasm has been waning. But I don't want it to!!! Yet I can't help it!!!

I must jiayou myself to hang in there. I had to google "I am losing my passion"

But Google said, "You are not losing your passion. You are merely losing your enthusiasm. Keep asking yourself why you're doing this in the first place. Why, why, why and regain that momentum. The Universe will guide you."


Hell yeah, Universe GUIDE ME, C'MON!

But of course, lemme get my act together before the Universe would even bother to save me. When I was young I know my mom would always say "God only helps those who help themselves"

Hell yeah, you're totes right Mr. Divine. Why'd you have to be male and not female by the way?

Anyway, I was up at 6 am yesterday to get ready even though I set my alarm an hour later... my body clock could tell how excited I am for CNY hahaha.


Wanted to...


Everyone in my family did their part to... wake up early.
I think doing that itself is a bloody big task. Especially for my bro, coz he sleeps at like 5 or smth almost every day. His body clock is pretty screwed.








I'm glad that I'm close to him... It came after we both became adults, after I matured and started to understand how we're so different even though we're siblings. He tells me a lot of things that's happening in his life and I find great comfort in knowing my brother confides in me. Great trust.

Used to be so envious of other close sibling bonds, but now I'm proud to make OTHER PEOPLE JEALOUS OF US HAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHA. Siao.

When we have our own families in the future, I want our families to be close toooo : )


Off we were to the many different houses - my dad's side is HUGE AS.

Same old, same old. I meet my dad's side of the family only once a year. So there are many I'd only see yes, once a year. All the extended, extended cousins... wow. It's like my dad's cousins' kids. Like are they even my cousins???? I suppose they are.

Since last year, there'd always be a star in our family. Last year it was a guy cousin (again, it's extended cousins) who won an MMA Fight (Mixed Martial Arts) and everyone was treating him like a superstar, wanting to take pictures with him and couldn't stop raving about him.



This year,

I dunno if you guys watch TV anymore but Channel 5 has this "The 5 Search" contest.

And my extended cousin is in the Finale!!!

She's a beauty, and I've watched a few episodes. She's great! And I hope she wins : ) Vote for her plssss. Takes great will and faith to go into this industry.

She gave my family tickets to watch the finale at Mediacorpppp, my old internship company hahahaha. My dad asked if I can help him get parking at Mediacorp and I was like uncle, I didn't do an internship at the Mediacorp carpark ok. Wahlau... think that I used to work there means I get privileges there ah?! Siao!! Macam CEO or what, mere intern only. Parents... are so kiasu goodness...


I wish I could keep up with all these extended cousins coz in all honesty, once all of our parents pass away, they will probably be people whom I won't meet anymore for CNY. Kinda sad huh? But I feel like I just started to really get to know them again. Coz we all used to be quite close when we were all young kids. That's when all of our parents were young and still agile and would hold big gatherings every now and then. And us children were young and free and stupid coz our human brains weren't fully formed then. Seeing the babies in this year's house visiting makes me go awww, I wonder what you'd be once you're at my age!


House visiting - embarked at 9:30 am, with the last house visit ending at 11:30pm. Reached Pasir Ris home at 12 ++ am.

Ex haus ting.

But my body woke my up at 8:30am God knows why. I wanna snooze till 11am please.

Today's my mom's side and they be coming to ma cribbbb tonight.
But first, blading at ECP.

To rid of all the food we stuffed ourselves with yesterday hahaha. I swear my capacity for eating is surprisingly bad this year. After my first curry chicken, I was stuffed. But I still trudged on with steamboat and chupchye and all the new year goodies. I swear to god I finished one tub of seaweed crackers all on my own, with only a wee bit of help from my bro. Sounds a lot eh? But it was merely coz I wanted to eat not coz I felt like eating. Appetite not huge this year?

Pineapple tarts and bak kwa have never been my favourites though. I know, I'm weird.

Have a splendid lunar new year ahead! Still more fun to go~

Oh you cannot imagine how excited I am for this year's Chinese New Year. It's an inexplicable feeling... I don't know why I feel an insurmountable surge of excitement for 2015's CNY! Maybe it's been a build up.

But yesss I am sooooper excited for CNY man, I can't wait to wear new clothes, meet all my relatives, get angbaos and more angbaos before I become too old and paiseh to receive any (hehe).

Alas, I am still in hall today. But of course I'll be heading back home for the all-important reunion dinner. I'd head over to my aunt's house for a gathering with my mom's side, cousins and all. It'll be a feast : ) I. can't. wait. EEEEKKK.



Anyways, the past week I met up with my Hall 3 fellas after 3 years of practically zero catch ups.


Soooo good to see them again.

It isn't the entire OG, but still I give a round of applause for the turnout.
Guess where we met for our BBQ session? Hall threeeee! Back to where it all began.

What I love about my hall friends is how we're all from different faculties in NTU. So it's like a conglomeration of the best brains of every sector of NTU. The United Nations of my University basically hahaha. Science, engineering, business, sport science and of course the bestest of all, Communication ; )

I hope this ain't the last time we're meeting coz it really was quite a fun catch up.




Also been busy with...


FYP{}{}{}{}
The past week : )

Yay yay I'm happy that things are in progress now~
My mates are worried about the eventual product but I dunno why I seem to be extremely calm and confident about it. I really dunno why. That's good eh!

Can't help but feel like the energiser bunny among us.


But I'm gonna talk about something a lil more serious right now.

Ya know, after Monday's shoot, I started to think about the nature of my work and the documentary film making industry in general. Our role as documentarians.

Our FYP is about understanding what a child thinks about and goes through when his/her parent is incarcerated or put to jail. There are a lot of aspects in the child's life that gets affected - academic, financial and most of all, emotional turmoil.

On Monday, I had to ask our interviewee personal questions about his feelings and thoughts about it. While asking, I felt like it was my role as a documentarian to have to delve deep and try to understand my interviewee through the questions I posed. This would help the audience to empathise with the person whom they're watching through his answers.

It applies to the rest of the work I've produced so far. To ask and ask so that you'll get to the core of the issue. So, I've always felt the need to persist and get to the heart of the matter.


Then after the interview in the afternoon, I followed the boy to fetch his sister from school. Every day, he'd walk 30 mins to and fro their primary school to get her (she's in the afternoon session) and he'd carry her schoolbag for her.

Whilst walking to get her, he talked to me, told me about some day-to-day stuff, what he liked and children stuff. Gradually, he started to be more friend-friend with me. Became more noisy, more talkative, more... happy. Even showed me some of his parkour moves, which were pretty damn amazing.


Here's one where he jumped over a concrete bench:

Hahahahahahahahaha, he's one crazy fella!
Can't show any pictures of his frontal view or face to protect his identity.

But anyway, after getting his sister, the both of them became such a chatter and fun bubbles to be with. I laughed while walking with them and called out to them when they threw caution to the wind while crossing the road or jumping around, making a fool out of themselves and being...... kids.

Then I realised something about how I was feeling... I realised... I was starting to care for them, for him especially.

And it was when he asked, "So when are you all coming back again?", which tore my heart into a million pieces. It wasn't just me who felt like a bond was created. He too, felt it.

I had built this little friendship with him after talking and walking with him to school. It was so young and fresh and new... so precious and delicate.

It was then, when it hit me... What am I doing?

Why the hell am I doing this. Entering his life and asking him questions that sometimes really shouldn't be dug out. My maternal instincts just kicked in.

I've always felt strongly for working in the media industry but this is one of the first most important points in my, albeit short, time of producing documentaries that I've felt this way. That I've felt that I may not be positively contributing to society by unearthing private matters that perhaps could be better off remaining unravelled.

What am I putting both him and myself through? Becoming friends and then perhaps not seeing one another ever again after our shoots are done? How bloody ethical is that.

I'm still trying to grapple with this.

For the projects that I've done on vulnerable situations and cases, I realise I'd have built a bond with my interviewees and then feel a bit exploitative. Even Darren Tan the ex-convict lawyer. I became friends with him during my shoots and after the show was aired, I wrote him a long email thanking him and told him how it's sad that we won't be in much contact anymore. He replied along the lines of, 'aiya, we'll still be friends after that'. But I'm sure we both knew it was sorta working friendship/relationship and what must end, will end.

I think this is one of the dilemmas that documentarians face... having to reconcile with what is personal and working. How to act as a professional, yet be sensitive to our interviewees.

So you see... right now, that's what's troubling me. In this case, it's even more touchy because we're dealing with a minor, a child. With people entering and leaving his life constantly, it really isn't much good for him. At least an adult may be able to comprehend what's going on, but him.. not yet.

I'm starting to have mixed feelings. Trying to work as an ethical documentarian and being a friend to him.

It can get a bit frustrating sometimes, having to build these short-termed relationships with people and then realise you will leave them eventually. Not even knowing whether you helped them or not.

That's why some of my friends and I are wondering if there's anything more that we can do, other than just film and that's all. There has to be something.

With regards to film making, I'll try my best to think of positive outcomes. As long as I know that I'm not deliberately harming the child, and being conscious of my actions, I think things will work out all right.


Children, I realise, have formed a special place in my heart. I realise it goes aflutter when I have fun with them. You'd want to teach, nurture, as well as protect and shelter the young ones as much as you can...


I really hope I don't cry on our last day of shoot with him.

Here's nice light captured at a void deck. Some parting words:


Let the light shine on every being out there, who feels out of place and lonely.
This world was made for all of us and we're here to be there for one another - to co-exist;
No one being is ever greater than another, and the light will always shine on you, no matter where you feel your place is in society.

Always, always, remember that.



Happy Lunar New Year everyone : )

Omg, this is my current favourite song and MV.

I feel like dancing just watching it and the beats just reverberating in my ears - Eargasm at its best.

The more times I view this video, the more I think the Asian girl is damn cute and pretty!!! Damn superficial of me huh hahaha. Asian pride though.

Dunno what the video and dancing's supposed to mean but who cares.

“When is the time you felt most broken?”
“I first ran for Congress in 1999, and I got beat. I just got whooped. I had been in the state legislature for a long time, I was in the minority party, I wasn’t getting a lot done, and I was away from my family and putting a lot of strain on Michelle. Then for me to run and lose that bad, I was thinking maybe this isn’t what I was cut out to do. I was forty years old, and I’d invested a lot of time and effort into something that didn’t seem to be working. But the thing that got me through that moment, and any other time that I’ve felt stuck, is to remind myself that it’s about the work. Because if you’re worrying about yourself—if you’re thinking: ‘Am I succeeding? Am I in the right position? Am I being appreciated?’ --- then you’re going to end up feeling frustrated and stuck. But if you can keep it about the work, you’ll always have a path. There’s always something to be done.”

The track outside my hall is amazing I lovvit! It's a newly built track for joggers and it's my third time running. Guess I've got a routine for myself right there.

It's actually a 3km track but for me to get back to where I started (my hall), I've to run the same distance back. Goodness.

I ran my first 6km on Tuesday. Was about to stop at 3km today (thinking to myself "I'm tired today" - as always) when my wkwsci prof drove by and shouted from her window "WOOHOOOO YOU GO GURLLLL!!!"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA, omg Nikki is so funny my goodness. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. Believe me, that woohoo got me farther and gave me an extra boost to run the other 3km back. I seriously would've stopped hadn't she driven by.

Encouragement along the way really help a lot man. I remember once when I was jogging outside my house and a dude opposite the canal clapped his hands twice. It caught my attention. Then I turned my head to see where it was coming from and he did a fist punch which meant, "push on". At first I didn't quite get it and creased my eyebrows like what??? Then I realised and I smiled. So nice these people. All these random acts of encouragement really help a lot.

Today I took a grand total of 45 mins to complete ok. I m so slow alright.

Well the only consolation is that I didn't stop. And that's enough for me.

I'm already so tired siah, 21km this April... wahlau conferm need to stop and walk lah.


Anyway, as you can see, fewer regular posts now coz I've more school work to do now. I'm happy to have work to do. Inspiration is needed - don't want to procrastinate.

Anyway, don't I look happy?!?!?!
Coz I ammmm!!! I just got the *important news* and it concerns my FYP. The search has finally come to an end.

I don't know if I talked about it here before, but long story short, in December, our profile pulled out. Which means that the person whom we wanted to feature in our documentary pulled out. That was devastating because it meant that we were left with nobody to feature and crunch time for filming was supposed to be in December. With nobody to shoot, it rendered us with nothing and we were back to square one.

Do you know how terrifying that was? Because everybody else had been filming and getting their things done. But us, we had to scramble once more and search for another profile.

I tell you, the past 2 months have been agonising. Plenty of waiting, plenty of rejections, plenty of mind torture basically. Fucken gruelling I tell you. Now I know there are at least 2 forms of stress - one is when you are too full of things to do that you feel overwhelmed, while the other mental stress is feeling helpless while being idle through days and days of waiting. The latter was what we've been going through the past two months. And it didn't help when everyone in school we met would ask, "eh how's FYP" and it was just depressing to have to retell the story 10,000 times, then meet shocked and pitiful faces.

But then again, it kinda helped coz after the 5,000th time, you just feel kinda numb. And we stopped really panicking anymore and had a single-minded focus to get things done. There was that phase when we did feel scared and worried and all that stuff, but we knew we had to get over it to get things done.

So today, I'm glad to say that we are at least able to start working on something now. My freakin god, I swear it was just... wow. I've imagined this day a thousand times, just replaying how the day when we finally secure a profile again would feel but didn't wanna play it too much lest I feel devastated by rejections.

Right now, we can finally start work proper on our documentary *cries* *cries even more*

FYP Deadline - 1st April (April Fools'.. what a cruel joke D; )

We seriously have not much time left anymore. This is only the beginning, the work has gotta go full force now. Like fur realz. Which is why February is the time for real stuff to go DOWN. March as well.

I'm thankful for the physical rest I got at the end of 2014 and start of 2015 - I managed to meet up a lot of my friends and caught up so I'm happy. I'm keeping up with my New Year's Resolution. Even my running has been consistent. Only last week when I only jogged once because... I was slightly sick. I really had a cough ok! And still do, with yellow phlegm ugh.

Now, school and I will be having a rather romanticised relationship. Be it the Tango or Waltz, we're gonna make it onstage.

We gon' make it.


p/s (cue Instagram) Jane Goodall's speech today was inspiring... So much warmth and kindness in her. I especially like how she described the support her mother gave her in her early years, which helped develop her interest in animals and encouraged her to always do more. A lot of female empowerment.

p/p/s I'M EXCITED