New Year's Eve - 2013

Well hello there my dear readers! It's half an hour till the new year y'all ! And hey, if you're reading this, you've survived the 21/12/12 Doom's Day! ...and are as miserable as I am, celebrating it at home with my notes and books coz of the finals I'm having on January 2nd.YAY FOR YOU SMART PEOPLE STAYING HOME! who needs the celebration anyway,you gotta endure traffic,and possible drunkard encounter,the crime rates are high.. pish posh.. no I'm not being sour because I can't go out with my friends, I bet they have their own plans with their own gang, I'm just saying it's smarter to stay home,heh.

Back to our little doom's day chit-chat, well admit it, you were a wee bit scared the Mayans were right, although I wasn't. Apocalypse postponed eh? Typical homo sapien, even postponing things when it comes to  predictions,heh procrastinators unite! Not that I'm being superstitious,I don't actually believe this but it's amusing to read how hard people work to spark panic. >> 2012 apocalypse postponed to 2014 ?

It's been a tradition for me to recap things in detail on the last day of the year,simply to reminiscent the good times and the bad times I've experienced. To be perfectly honest,2012 has been unexpectedly very dynamic in terms of experiences, it was one hell of a ride which I can't simply describe in one word. It's been an equal share of sweet and sour, pretty much resembles a bag of skittles.

It started off with a BAM, who would've thought I'd meet my heroes from Simple Plan : Pierre, Seb, David, Chuck, Jeff in person and watch them perform live?It was simply amazing, especially on account of getting to watch my punk rock princess as well within two consecutive months! I believe I need not to elaborate on this, as I've done enough of it within a blog post I had earlier on in January :'>

 Degree.. wow, to be describing what it's like here in one post would be an understatement. Sure,it was tough at first with my culture shock towards the sudden independence expected by the lecturers from us,but we managed to pull through. I met a lot of new people along the way,and hey, who would've known, that nerdy guy in FIC January 2011 (my sort of foundation senior) I used to think as someone who's super reserved and geeky would actually turn out to be my best friend within 8 months? I was thankful I had someone to be close with to that degree after Mahirah left. I'm a bit fuzzy as to how we actually connected,perhaps the fact that we're both guitarists?Or maybe we're just randomly insane,yeah that. I remembered his first question to me : "Why do you take Software Engineering?" I've forgotten what my answer was,but it was something along the lines of my desire to 'build my own software from scratch'. One thing led to another, then there I was,with him in his car,hunting for an electric guitar. We started talking everyday, and eventually know everything about each other, also often mistaken as a 'blooming couple',lol. For a short period of time,we've been into a lot of ups and downs, many a time have we saved each other's lives (not literally), and many a time have we gotten into big fights,but later on resolved in less than a day. I couldn't thank Allah enough for granting my wish to have someone to be physically there for me when I need him fter Mahirah left for Aussie. Jitki is Jitki, he will never be Mahirah, but I appreciate what we share so far,and I love them both equally.

Here's to you Jitki, (ultragay alert) : You're the best gift God has given me this year (after meeting Simple Plan,lol) .Thank you SO MUCH for all that you've done for me,for all the reality checks you gave me,for all your advice, for all the pointless bickering,for all the joy, for all the PMS-ing (which made me realize I shouldn't use it as an excuse to burst at people,nice reverse psychology),for all the insane conversations,for all the music.May this friendship last for many years to come :D

Enough gayness, we've still a couple of stuff more to revisit. This was also the year I first exposed my songs to the public, in Starbucks! It was all meant to be written for my personal enjoyment,but the crowd response was amazing! I didn't expect to literally perform it, it was however an amazing experience,not to mention,being appointed as the Managing Director of Taylor's Music CLub, I've dealt with so many obstacled along the way of organizing events. Jessie and Leanne are indeed such awesome people to work with,their passion for music,charisma,leadership,commitment,everything merges into one to form a very solid team. There has been a lot of changed in Music Club,and needless to say it's been a pleasure to be part of the pioneers and drivers to these changes.

Last but not least,here's to the new year 2013, hopefully as dynamic and adventurous as 2012!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

xxxx
Yana.

How Many Centuries Have Passed...

... since this blog's updated?

I owe my readers,followers, and those people who discovered my blog in one way or another, a major apology for once again leaving this blog to the hands of spiders and dust bunnies. Degree has undeniably suck the very life out of my physical being, thereby depriving me of my time to blog and of course,spam this space xD I guess this explains the random quotes I've been throwing all over my Twitter huh?i can only stand being deprived of my blogging time for so long. So basically there has been a number of happenings in my life that i have not been updating about. Let's start with the oldest one,and then build up to the latest event shall we.

BRACE YOURSELF,this is bound to be an extremely long post,with extremely large amounts of pictures and captions!

• Music Club's Divas vs Kings Concert. (20th April 2012)

This was my first ever event that I've organized as a new BOD alongside Jessie. Planning stage wasn't as intense as MJ Night considering that this event is less ambitious. Admission was free and the theme was pretty 'narrow'. The idea was to get our Elite members to expose themselves to songs performed by artists whom they consider as 'Kings or Divas'.Here's an interesting part, at the very last minute,we decided to give it a charity twist.Back then there was a devastating story about the late Alda Tan (an infamous independent bassist) who collapsed into a coma due to brain cancer. We decided to give him a helping hand by raising minor funds merely by placing two containers labelled 'Kings' and 'Divas' in the middle of the stage for attendees to donate. At the end of the show,we were to calculate which team, Kings or Divas, who contributed the most to the charity.We even got Adam Lobo from Dragon Red to come and give us a little speech regarding Alda's condition. Neo did an excellent job emceeing the entire show. The playlist and performers go as follow :

Sequence (No.)	Song List	Performer
Opening	Hush + I Will Survive mashup	Leanne Chuan, Maya Hanum
King 1 Diva 1	Hound Dog by Elvis Presley Love On Top by Beyonce	Spellman Choy Ron Hoe
King 2 Diva 2	Use Somebody by Kings of Leon Without you	Dzaim Adzmi Alif
Transition (Break)	I Want to Spend My Lifetime Loving You	Adam, Leanne
King 3 Diva 3	You Are Not Alone by Michael Jackson I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston	Faiz Ruda
King 4 Diva 4	What’s Up Lambert Medley	Ryham Haris Jessie Lim
King 5 Diva 5	Yellow by Coldplay Irreplaceable	Spellman Choy Leanne Chuan
King 6 Diva 6	Home by Michael Buble Against All Odds	Adam Alif
King 7 Diva 7	The Way You Look Tonight I Wanna Dance With Somebody	Jason Phung Maya Hanum
Transition (Break)	Greatest Love of All	Hui Ying, San San
King 8 Diva 8	Man In the Mirror by Michael Jackson And I’m Telling You	Dzaim Adzmi Ruda
King 9 Diva 9	Don’t Look Back In Anger Stand Up For Love	Ryham Haris Park Jung A
Grand Finale	We Will Rock You	Elites All Star

As a last minute thing,I played guitar for Ryham as she sang 'What's Up' by 4 Non Blondes, a song I would have never thought I would ever perform. It went really well. Most of them,especially Ryham,Ruda,Jung-A,Maya & Ron totally brought the house down :D Not to mention Mahirah's surprise attendance ! My personal favorites of the night were of course Dzaim's 'Use Somebody' ( the crowd sang along with him,backing him up with the iconic "ohh woo-oh oh woo-oh", I think he cried at one point :') ), Sai's epic fail Man In The Mirror when he forgot how the song starts but managed to control the situation by making it a joke, Ron's adorable 'Love On Top' cacat dance HAHAHA, Ryham's slot with me (although she almost forgot the first line,but moi saved the day by playing an extra bar of progressions hehe), and also, the crowd's participation in We Will Rock You,rocking with us,drumming their seats and stomping their feet. It was just epic and all our effort paid off!

*p/s : please please please don't ever talk about my epic fail harmonization for Greatest Love of All, a guitarist should stay as one,and never ever ever ever sing.

• Babo Violence, Lake Busking, & Avengers. (1st May)

So the boys in my class introduced me to this addictive game called Babo Violence,which is a basically a first person shooter game involving characters in the form of colorful balls (yes you read that correctly, BALLS) in obstacles built by players beforehand. It's a multiplayer game,so we had uber fun playing on LAN considering it was just the beginning of the semester, a dull Monday,per say. This was long before ground rules were set,disallowing games to be played in computer labs. That session was in the morning,in the evening,on the other hand,I had a little busking session by the lake with the usual Elite gang,singing random songs before having dinner and heading on to Sunway Pyramid to watch The Avengers.

•  Best Assignment Ever (11th May)

Wanna know what's probably the most fun assignment we've ever done? The publicity stunt assignment for Communication for IT Professionals ! Our idea was to promote Sparta Energy drink! (in this sense,'we' refer to my group consisting me,Yen,Seelan,Shafeeq, Zul & Khanna). Apparently we had a slight crossover with another group consisting Jitki, Kai, Calvin, Chee Heng & Jacky (or as we like to call them, the Januarians, since they came from FIC January intake, technically our intake 'seniors', heh). They did 'Sparta Chicken' so we decided to collaborate. The idea was to ..'shove' our posters to the random people in SLC,asking for their feedback regarding the outlook of the posters we designed. Some of us went as far as bringing paintball war gears (the one everyone was oh-so-fond of messing with xD). 

p/s: Why wasn't I in the same group as Jitki? Back then we merely knew each other,and I only know him as 'that weird guy from FIC Jan,who introduced himself as JK but no one calls him that' lol. Little did I know,later on we'd grow so close within months,it scares us.

• Calvin's Manson Makeup (15th May)

Someone went all out for his class project, Marilyn Manson makeover,need I say more? I'm missing this mofo already, he left for Adelaide :(

• Random Friday (guitar hunting, mcd dinner,playground gossip - 19th May)

This was probably the first outing I've had with Jitki before we became best friends. He wanted to look for a guitar,knowing that I had somewhat of a wisdom relating to music,he dragged me along,guitar hunting from store to store, from Sunway Pyramid,to TGS Damansara Perdana,to Bentley to some other random music stores along LDP. Knowing that we might not make it back in time for dinner,he decided to have it at my place instead,where coincidentally, Yen and Angyu was after Yen's futsal session.Clearly Jitki's presence partially surprised them as they weren't aware of our closeness. The rest of the night was spent watching 'Whose Line Is It Anyway' after dinner followed by a McDonald's session,and a gossip session at the playground near my place (where abandoned buses were,making the place slightly eerie,much like a potential zombie hotspot). This marked the first outing we've ever had as a gang.

•  Final Outing with Mahirah (27th May)

Just like every other farewell tradition,it was a must for us to at least have a final outing with Mahirah before she flew off to Adelaide to pursue her dream course in degree level. Our destination this time was Time Square,why? Because it's in the heart of the City,and it's near other shopping spots as well. As much as I despise shopping, for Mahirah, I'll survive xD We first had lunch in Nando's (for some reason,this place has always been our first stop before anything else o.O), went window shopping for a bit and had a karaoke session. Let's just say it's my first time being cooked up in a room,with music at full blast,random tidbits on the table and screaming my lungs out to various tunes. It's one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done,karaoke comes second in my 'fun things to do before I die' list after rock gig pogo xD we ended our little outing with a little more shopping and camwhoring! 

to be continued.... more updates coming soon, expect a part 2 :))