NARCISSISM IS NECESSARY

All pictures taken with my Nokia N82.

Saturday - The Day

10 May 2008 - World Lupus Day.

The event that ShutterAsia has been trying very hard to put together for more than a month finally happened with tremendous success. The Minister of Health, YB Dato’ Liow Tiong Lai officiated the launch and was a good sport throughout the event.

Getting this event up was a tough journey indeed, and must be especially so for Freaky (otherwise known as James) whom may I say, single handedly made this happen with little or no help at all. I would like to thank Freaky for roping me in and I’m proud to say that it’s an honour to have worked alongside him. While I escaped to party with Tiesto, he stuck on till 10pm to make sure the event ran smoothly till 1 Utama closed. James, I <3 you!

James @ Freaky, emcee for the day.

I would like to thank Nikon and 1 Utama for being such generous sponsors as well. When I heard from someone who spoke to the Nikon big man, and he revealed that for this event, he doesn’t even care about any newspaper or media coverage. He just wants Nikon to contribute to the photography community and society in general. He knew for a fact that ShutterAsia ran this event with no monetary support whatsoever, everything from the venue to exhibition stands to carpeting to sound system to the balloons….were contributed by companies that supply them. That’s not just it, some of the people from these sponsor companies even got down and dirty helping with the event setup. It was truly an eye-opening experience for me.

1 Utama (thank you Ms. Joey C.) said yes to my request for venue sponsorship within hours of my FIRST email without even batting an eyelid. To be honest, before approaching 1 Utama, I had sent several request to other smaller shopping complexes, most did not reply (as expected) and one even sent back to ask for ROI Report (I was flabbergasted). But 1 Utama, which was my last resort…..because it’s such a successful shopping complex and was very intimidating, said yes to us within hours!

They were also very accommodating to us eventhough the exhibition could not be set up extravagantly in line with the interior of 1 Utama due to budget constraint, but they allowed us to hold our event anyway with nothing but genuine support. You may not know this too, but 1 Utama is probably the only shopping complex in Malaysia with space (it’s called Community Corner on 1st Floor Oval, New Wing) allocated for non-profit organisations that are struggling to afford any space for their charity events.

Anything Butterfly Photography Exhibition is still on-going till 18th May 2008. Persatuan SLE Malaysia will be there selling homemade craft and accepting donations. 1 Utama, 1st Floor Oval, New Wing :)

Satuday - Night

After the event, I reached home at 5pm, showered and made my way to KY’s house. We all had dinner (or rather, I joined them while they were already eating) and then started our journey to PD. I was mostly unconscious during the journey but I managed to wake up during a toilet stop and took a picture of this car with something from the bathroom on the side mirror.

Recycle, reduce, reuse.

We reached Admiral Marina about 10.30pm parked not too far from the event venue. The queues were gawdamn long -_- and it was so humid. I was soaked by the time we entered party grounds.

Can you spot PinkPau’s setan face?

Without further ado, the faggots (our endearing nickname for each other) got a carton of beer to jump-start party mood. And then another carton…

Beer.

I took 1/2 a can and promptly passed out. I would like to defend myself that under normal circumstances I could have consumed 1 can with no problems but I was already exhausted from work.

Here is a picture of Spongefox sipping his beer.

Spongefox sipping the beer.

I puked several times into the empty plastic bag that had contained the beer before I was well enough to walk nearer to stage. I managed to catch a glimpse of Tiesto making his grand debut before passing out again. The last song I remembered hearing before my slumber was In The Dark (which I f-king love).

TIESTO!

Then I woke up to some random stuff I’ve never heard before but were still f-king awesome. I was almost well again and I danced and danced and danced…

Fab lighting.

Sweaty girl.

Kim & KY.

Kim & Eyeris.

And then Love Comes Again came on. I was estatic!!!

You gotta believe that…Love comes again

From then on, it was orgasm all the way, man.

TIESTO!

Crowd was just loving every second.

The finale was amazing. Forever Today came on along with fireworks and confetti!

Forever Today

We left party ground at 3am and made our way home. Thank you to the Suan for driving us all back safely to Ming Tien for supper.

Every time after a rave party, I’d always claim it’d be my last but man, as long as Tiesto is playing my last rave party is not yet in sight.

Sunday

I woke up at 3.30pm on Mother’s Day. Mom was very understanding not to have woken us up, since we stumbled into the house at 6.30am. We went to Pearl International Hotel for buffet, which was fabulous (KY blogged about it here). They had an array of activities lined up for Mom’s Day that I didn’t even know about when I made reservation. They took our family picture and printed it out, had a good lucky draw with trips to various destinations as prizes and yummy goodies to take home. Mom was very happy :)

Then, I taught her to blog and use Flickr!!!!! :D She’s just posted her first entry after about an hour of frustration (heh heh heh) and I hope she didn’t get turned off by the complexity (obviously to me it’s like clockwork). I’ll definitely pimp her blog when she hits her 5th entry. So dearest, please leave some words of encouragement here because she doesn’t believe it when I say a lot of people would love to read her blog!

You want to, don’t you?? (p/s: the momsie is a hottie).

In conjunction with St. Patrick’s Day, Bossa Nova (Parkroyal Hotel), Bulldog, Sevenatenine, Delaney’s, Nikko Hotel and Jarrod & Rawlins are participating in Guinness Draught Infused Food Creation Contest, serving their very own Guinness-inspired dishes throughout the month of March. All the Guinness-inspired fare will be judged by Chef Emmanuel Stroobant of Asia Food Channel’s Chef in Black.

Thanks to the good folks from Guinness, I was able to sit down for lunch with the celebrity Chef himself, Emmanuel Stroobant at Jarrod & Rawlins. He was there to evaluate the food creation by Jarrod & Rawlins and I was just there to get starstruck, eat and be merry :)

Guinness Stout.

The chef from Jarrod & Rawlins whipped up some Guinness ribs from scratch while Chef Stroobant watched on. I’m all for open kitchen concept cause watching your food meticulously put together by a chef is a wonderful experience.

Kitchen kungfu.

Chef Stroobant shared with me his judging method for all the participating outlets. He has about a dozen categories ranging from hygiene to creativity which he would rank between 1-10, 1 being poorest and 10 being exceptional. He showed me the scores of the other participating restaurants he has ranked in his moleskin notebook.

It was very interesting….I shall not divulge who pwns who aye!

Chef Emmanuel Stroobant evaluates.

Grilling the ribs, baby.

The ribs were pretty good, the meat was juicy and very well flavoured. And I absolutely love the contrast of taste courtesy of the diced beetroot. I hope they will continue to serve the dish after March.

Hearing the little voice calling out for a perfect pint of Guinness yet? Well, then head on to Guinness St. Patrick’s Festival this Saturday, 15th March 2008 at Plaza Mont’ Kiara because starting from 5pm, the first 1000 party guests will get a free pint of Guinness!

Guinness St. Patrick’s Festival

Of course, for the weight watching ladies, there’s always the hotness that is Chef Emmanuel Stroobant as a reason to go to the carnival ;)

Chef Emmanuel Stroobant.

p/s: I’m still waiting for my picture with him. Will post it up as soon as I got it!

So I was talking about friendships in my previous post and it seems to me from all the comments that people do prefer friends to be honest with them. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly a huge sample for me to be drawing any conclusion but common sense prevails, no?

That said, aren’t we mostly all righteous and philosophical but when it comes down to the real deal, the Real McCoy, we tend to shy away from confrontations with friends? I mean, I can totally understand the discomfort of telling your friend that he or she has smelly feet, body odour or an attitude change.

I’ve once read somewhere that human beings are accommodating beasts. I agree with that. I mean, I have friends who are still hanging out with an ex-friend (to me) who is a known molestor. And I in turn, accommodate to my friends’ choice of friend even though I’m a victim. I’ve never asked them to sever their relationships with him or sever mine with them. Although I would have loved that this person be punished in some ways but well, one friendship is already a complex thing. Put so many together in one pot and we’ve got ourselves an anthropological bender.

Anyway, I’ve said too much already.

Just one last thing….a friend who touched one of your friends inappropriately and a friend who said the wrong things to one of your friends. Which one would you choose?

No brainer? Trust me, you would be absofuckinglutely surprised.

As for what kind of friend I am. Well, I’m certainly not the kind you would like to take out in public.

Knob.

Couldn’t help but laughed when I received an invitation to Heineken Extra Cold Beer Launch at Velvet Underground. I mean, seriously, I have a category called “Alcoholic Faux Pas” in my blog for goodness’ sake.

I’m not exactly the best drinker in the world. But you got to love me for my passion, you know what I mean….I may not be able to hold down more than two drinks but I sure do enjoy drinking, while I could still hold my head up that is. And man, girl here can never ever resist a free flow ;)

And I did enjoy my time at the party.

Heineken Extra Cold Beer.

Joey G was the host, as usual. He’s practically everywhere eh? I really don’t mind him, he’s really good at what he does and he’s got the looks to boot.

Joey G.

The launch.

Our eyes glistened at the sight of 6 fridges fully stocked with Heineken Extra Cold. Yuuuummmy!

Hot girls to hand out the cold beers.

On my first bottle of Heineken Extra Cold…

The party heated up…

Dancing with Tim. Man’s got the moves…

I got pretty tipsy after the first bottle and apparently I was jumping around like a monkey or something. The Heineken beer tasted so good at such low temperature (0 Celsius - 3 Celsius).

Doing the monkey moves.

Joey G was conducting a pop quiz at some point and I won a black Heineken shawl. ST told me I gave the wrong answer, but who cares…it’s the spirit that counts! Thanks Joey G!

Me and my prized shawl.

With hottie, Joey G.

So I had tonnes of fun, well, I always do when I had alcohol in my blood stream, hehehe.

p/s: Thanks ST for most of the pictures here. Dude’s an awesome photographer, you must absolutely get him for any of your photography need.

Read about Heineken Extra Cold at:

FA
Joyce
Tim
ST

I slammed into a wall, face first after a shot of Bailey’s.

Conversation with my boo after that….

“Go to sleep”, boo said.

“No, I’m sober than ever. I’m so happy. I need to slam into walls more often after drinks”, me said.

“Shut up and go to sleep”, boo said.

“NO!!!!”, me said.

“Go to sleep”, boo said.

“You’re cacat”, me said.

“You’re super mega cacat”, boo said.

“You’re super duper mega duper cacat for dating a super mega cacat chick”, me said.

“You’re so cacat they ought to make a movie out of you titled CACATMAN”, boo said.

Both: BUWAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA.

Went to Carnegie’s for ladies’ night. Ladies were given 4 drink coupons at the entrance. Apparently it has a good list of house drinks but it’s not like I knew how to enjoy it. I had one Heineken and was basically high on it the whole night. The rest of the coupons went to waste because alcohol elitists like FA and Suan would rather pay for big pints of Hoegaarden instead.

The place was infested with SPGs. And I mean stereotypical, straight out of the textbook kind of SPGs. Long straight hair, slightly tanned, mini skirt/tightass jeans and a little skimpy top with the bitchiest expression (to other women anyway). Mostly hogging the bar area waiting for balding, pasty white men with beer bellies to buy them drinks. The bar was so crowded it’s so gawddamn difficult for me to get ice water to dilute my Heineken.

We were at a bar table located right next to an elevated platform where more tables were placed. There were two girls seated just in front of us. At first they were having dinner and talking to each other. Fine. Then two old white men with the most horrible set of teeth stopped by their table and chatted them up. Wah, started to giggle like hell already. Then two more SPGs joined them. I tell you, I think these girls work in a team.

Not long after, the four SPGs started dancing. Gyrating their hips from side to side, durrrrrrrrty dancing with each other to the delight of the two wrinkled pasty men. At one point, one of them even sort of flashed at the perverts by undoing her cardigan.

Ok fine. I was more than a bit tipsy after consuming one bloody glass of Heineken, my legs were numb and I was just chilling. Suddenly, a wave of coldness enveloped me. Stupid SPGs shook their hips so hard they managed to topple the table and spilt drinks over me.

Instant soberiety.

The SPG’s heads are deliberately painted smaller to indicate lack of grey matter

They were still giggling. I screamed at them, “I THINK YOU OWE ME AN APOLOGY, I’M DRENCHED!”. Then one of them offered me a half-baked apology which, to be honest, I wasn’t in a good state of mind to accept. I swear I was about to stomp up to the platform and punch them in the face one by one.

The culprit. I took this picture because it’s got Paul’s name. Notice the SPGs at the back.

Didn’t stay very long after that. Danced a bit to get my mind off my jeans which felt really heavy on my numb legs. It was a fun night nevertheless but I’ve only worn my jeans for 2 days and now I have to wash it again…tiu.

I had one glass of milky coffee and baileys. I’m digging that stuff.

BF scolded me. Apparently, I would sleep way past dinnertime and all that shite.

I said I didn’t taste no alcohol and I won’t fall asleep.

Few hours later, “W00t! I just woke up with half my face covered in drool…”

BF: …………….

At least, it’s not even dinnertime yet.

3 posts in a day. Yeah, I should bloody get a job now. ROTFLOL.