On Sunday the boys (Henry Golding, David Barton-Grimley and Khalid Hilaby) and I decided to venture out of KL for a little rest and relaxation. Thanks to Omar (and Mariq and Effa), we found our way to the waterfalls at Sungai Dua, off the Karak highway. It was actually supposed to be a post birthday celebration for Chuong, but then birthday boy didn’t show up so we had all the fun for him (Happy Birthday Chuong)!

I shamefully admit that this is the first time I’ve been to such a pretty waterfall. Not that I’ve only been to ugly falls, but they’ve all been small and trickly rather than big and gushing. There is something rather magical about falls. Especially when you finally manage to claw your way to the back of one. It is a mixture of silence and noise. To one side the stillness of the ‘cave’ and on the other side the sound of water beating down on the rocks.

We spent the better half of the day just monkeying around, jumping off branches into the water, swinging from ropes and trying to get under the falls. It isn’t easy business because the water was pounding down furiously almost mockingly!

Anyway, here are some tips on surviving the falls (from your professional fall surviver – moi – of course):

• Wear the right gear. Take a tip from Dave who wore his sneakers. We had to walk across a small body of water and Dave thought the best course of action is to just walk through with his sneakers only, which equals to soaked sneakers.
• Bring a towel. Or two. You will need to dry yourself off and nobody likes sharing towels!
• Bring a mat. We forgot to bring one, and had to make do with the rocks around us. It wasn’t horrible but it would’ve been awesome to have a mat to lie on to relax and catch some rays.
• Sunblock. The boys were well and truly burnt by the end of the day! The thing about the falls is that you can’t tell when the sun is working its magic cause it’s so nice and cooling there. But rest assured that you will get burnt, so best to be prepared.
• You don’t need that much food! So we learnt. We brought enough food to feed… a lot of people. Didn’t even manage to make a sizable dent in our ration. So just bring easy to make food (Khalid’s bread and turkey ham slices was a big hit, mainly because it was so easy to put together) and lots of water.
• Be prepared to get wet. It’s a waterfall. Full of water. At some point you will get wet. Wear your swimmers underneath and don’t worry about your hair.
• Pick up after yourself. When we finally made it to the back of the falls, we found empty bottles of Coke! Seriously, it won’t kill you to just throw everything into a bag and carry it out with you. It take about a minute but the effect is priceless.
• Have as much fun as you possibly can! I felt like a child again. It’s been awhile since I was scrambling up rocks, jumping off branches and screaming at gushing water (don’t ask me why but, I was just standing there screaming at the water – happily of course). By the end of the day we felt exhausted but good.

My whole body is aching now but I’m loving it. The boys and I have decided to take a trip out of KL every month just to get away. It doesn’t have to be expensive or very far away. Sungai Dua took us about an hour to get to. Next month we’re going to try Kuala Kubu Baru. There’s Sungai Chenang there and I hear it’s got a real pretty waterfall.

Trala, la, la, la…

All the photos you see here are from Omar’s Flickr Photostream! You can find more photos from the trip there too!

hi Kat,

back in KL la…have been for quite some time….good job on the telly my realisation is that the “formula” is great to know and sometimes the only thing that one can fall back on when everything gets crazy…but it is only thru the lense of experience that it is embodied…thats where i am at right now: experience…in what ever way it presents itself to me (and almost always not necessarly the way i expect it to be)

have fun on tv!

—————-

hey babe
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!
didn’t think i’d forget did ya?

i just got back from chicago
my pic on the chicago reader!
here are some pics of my trip

—————-

Mi querida Hani,

Hi baby, after all those emails from you I cant wait to see you again and talk to you about your trip, it sounds like a lot of fun..yeah I love yachts now (yachts being after you of course).. KL got better now, its finally raining! too bad you are not here to watch the rain with me..well i guess getting burned on a yacht with occasional scuba dives into the crystal water of the sea, surrounded by colorful fishes and  beautiful corals and relaxing times in a Jacuzzi may be some what more indulging than staring at the rain..however i think if at this moment someone would offer me one or the other, I would choose to stare at the rain with you by my side.

What else have i done…its mostly college work, next week i have three presentations, so im working on it now and a paper due a week after that.

Yeah, I miss you and if you can please come into my dreams more often.

Take care baby and i miss you, muah, muah, muah.

———————-

Le sigh..

These bring back memories. Are there any old emails (since I don’t get letters anymore – except from Matthew who always sends me lovely postcards) that you could read that would make you feel better? Go ahead poke around, you might be surprised!

Good times~

Here are some pictures from the shoot I did last year for a telemovie called Taubah. Taubah means repent. Yes, I am the naughty, sex driven, beer guzzling vixen who finally realizes how wrong she is and repents, and marries an ex convict 20 years her senior (but is mightily pious) and lives happily in a village.

Haha! I keed I keed. The story line, while might make many roll their eyes, was actually not as bad as I initially thought it would be. It’s just a story of a girl who wants more from life rather than spend all her time boozing and having random sex. Plus in the telemovie I was meant to be sick – all that boozing had left me with a weak kidney. In a way I kind of relate. I had an experience like this a few years back when I used to party a lot (the wondering about how there must be more to life bit, not the move to the village and marry and ex convict bit).

My friends know that I’m not too keen on the booze in real life. I hardly drink – perhaps a nice glass of wine, the occasional beer, champagne (ah champagne.. yum!). And while I’m not against other people drinking, I do not like it when people can’t control their booze – especially when it relates to me.

I’ve had many instances when guys decide it’s confession time after consuming copious amounts of booze (I don’t mean a couple of beers, I mean can’t stand straight, form constructive sentences drunk). They happen to think it’s a good time to wonder out loud (drooling and smelling) why you won’t fuck them, why you don’t love them, why you won’t go out with them, what is wrong with them, how they thought that we had something between us. Uh.. NO! Bad drunk, bad drunk!

Or women who get soo drunk that they can’t stand (why is it that women get drunk, they instantly lose the ability to walk?), they flop onto the nearest guy, unconsciously puke all over them, make a complete arse of themselves, flash nasty knickers. NO! Ladies! Have some dignity!

Or men and women who get all emotional while drunk and one poor sod will have to babysit them the whole night, while listening to their emo ramblings. Or people who don’t realize or won’t admit they’re drunk and insist on driving, or how they never want to go home, or how they keep repeating things annoyingly. I mean COME ON! Tsk..

Anyway I digress. The telemoviee! The telemovie! FOCUS!

Yeah, it should be out.. uh.. this year? I’ll let ya know when it finally shows. Hopefully it’ll be online so I can watch it too, cause I don’t have a TV – well I do have a TV just no cable or nothing. I only watch the Internet. HAHA! Loser!

Ok ta..

So I’m going to New York tommorow.

I don’t think that anything else can be said after that..

I think I’ll go run around jumping in joy now.

Later..

Sorry the picture is a little low quality. I don’t have a camera now and I took this using my camera phone. The t-shirt says (in the Malaysian language):

Matahari tidak tahu ianya bintang.

That means:

The sun does not know its a star.

It’s a saying Richard saw on a t-shirt in Japan (in English of course). It truly is a saying for Richard. He is the sun but he doesn’t realise that he is a star.

Actually, that goes for all of us!

It was quite simple to make really. I used these lovely fabric dye sticks called Fabric Fun by Pentel.

I was meant to use a light colored or white t-shirt so that the colors stood out, but too late I read the instructions! Still, I like the sedated colors, it gives the t-shirt some character.

These sticks are the easiest to use! And also really cheap. I bought them at Artfriend, Gardens (next to Borders) for about RM6.80.

1. Create a draft of the design you want to use. If you’ve got text, it’s best to use a computer and print out the text so it comes out neat and nice.
2. Put a piece of cardboard inside the t-shirt so that the color doesn’t leak through t-shirt.
3. Stretch the t-shirt. This is rather important. It’s really difficult to draw on if the t-shirt isn’t stretched. It’s not impossible, but makes things easy all around.
4. Put your design underneath the t-shirt (but on top of the cardboard) where you like it to appear on the front of the t-shirt. It is important that you can see the design. If not, you can make a stencil and cut out the design.  I printed my design out, but then my t-shirt color was too dark and I couldn’t see the design through it. So I had to freehand the whole thing.
5. Carefully trace the design using the dye sticks. And then you can color it in, or do whatever it is you want. Get creative!
6. When you’re done, cover the t-shirt (the design part) with paper and iron it – according to the correct temperature for the t-shirt fabric. And you’re done!

Easy peasy~

It is also wise to wash the t-shirt beforehand to get rid of any traces of dye, anti-static fluid or conditioner in it. This way the color will stay on the t-shirt.

I’ll be making another t-shirt for myself. I’ll post it up soon!

The Bonyari Japanese Travelling Band once again came down to KL to charm us with their music. I loved them the first time they were here. Even had them perform at Laundry Bar and the second time around it’s no different! They have a lot of new music this time around and are charming as ever.

They performed at Palate Palette on Divali eve, last Sunday. If you see them performing on the streets don’t forget to give them a donation – though I’m sure you’ll do it anyways as they’re awesome!

And i’ve just started a new shoot, so i have even less time to do school work and more time to feel guilty about it. The new shoot is a kids drama for Astro, called Hikayat Putera Shazlan about a young boy who gets bullied by his aunt who looks after him after his parents pass away, but he has a magic book that helps him. A little bit Harry Potter-ish. I play his aunt’s sister who has recently moved back to KL, and want in on the boy bullying action.

My character is very Morticia Adams – I mean i don’t look like her but act like her just a little. It’s lovely! I have two kids who are like Wednesday and Pugsley. And they had to make me look older so i wear a wig in the show, ’cause I look more like their sister than their mum (ahem!)

I’ll take some pictures soon enough to put up here! I’m shooting with Filmscape and one of my favourite directors, Kabir is directing the first 2 episodes before moving on to direct another drama – of which I hope to be in too

Anyway, I had so much of fun over the weekend (when i was not busy feeling guilty that is!).

I went for a workshop at Lightworks which was great and I came out of it on a very real energetic high. The meditations were very good and I released a lot of things – hence the high! K.B is a wonderful facilitator! Some of the things we worked on were:

1. Overcoming self destruct. This I think everyone needs to work on. We all seem to have a very deeply placed self destruct button that stops us from getting where we want to go, and accomplishing our goals. This was a powerful journey and I will need to do it many many times.
2. Self Acceptance – Releasing Guilt. HAHAH! OK, this one was very powerful too, but I guess i’ll need to do more releasing with this, since I am currently practically runnnig on guilt! Guilt is one of the most useless emotion to have actually. On a vibrational level it runs really low, close to 0. Anger and fear can sometimes serve us – to warn us, protect us – but guilt? No uses whatsoever. So this is a real important on to release.
3. Age Regression. Most of the time we tend to run as adults using programs that served us a children. One would never imagine wearing the same clothes as one wore as a child, but somehow we feel it appropriate to function emotionally at the same level as you were as a child. Of course, we usually don’t know this, so I don’t blame anyone but think about it, how many times do you react to a situation based on some incident that happened to you many, many years ago?  This journey was for exactly that reason and it was a powerful one.

So these were the more powerful journeys we took during the workshop. KB was kind enough to record the whole thing so that we could bring it back and use it again and again.

After the workshop I went to the Annexe to visit Hisham and Peter. Did you manage to catch the exhibition they had there? I can’t remember what it’s called, but it was awesome! The real history of Malaysia – FINALLY! I’m a little bit pissed, because I spent all that time learning all this rubbish history about Malaysia for school. Such a lot of cover up. After which we adjourned next door to the exhibition for Gerome’s Disko Darurat! And danced the night away! Brilliant!

Have you been to wordle.net before?

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

The picture above is the words from my website. It’s bloody cool. You’ll spend ages wordl-ing words!

Also, after ages of being a superstar, Henry found it in his heart to come meet up with me. How blessed I am!

He just recently moved his bony arse to a far away land out of my way and I had to meet him at The Curve. Hanson was also part of the equation and for a wee bit we sat down and chatted about how crappy the Malaysian banks and other general things are. I also brought up the whole guy-pay-for-girl experiment and got quite a different perspective. I’ll tally it one day and put it up.

Henry has got his blue steel look on.

You realise I’m going to say Henry as many times as I can cuz there are a lot of little girls who go crazy over him and will be googling “Henry Golding”  and come to my site,  increase the traffic only to find that it doesn’t have any substantial Henry Golding news and go away disappointed.

HA HA HA HA HA!

(sigh, I am sad…)

Ui Hua: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. I’m sorry to hear that

Me: ……..

At the Sony Ericsson store at The Gardens (it’s right next to the Nokia store)

Me: Uh.. I need to get another charger for my phone…

Man: Wah so fast you lost the one you bought that day?

Me: Uh no, my cat chewed through it again…

Man: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahhahaaa… I mean, here. RM80 please.

Me: ……….

I only have RM100.

Man: Aiya, I got no change. Wait I will break the RM100.

I wait around.

Man: Nah your change.

Me: Oh where did you break it?

Man: At the Nokia store lor…

So Ui Hua and I came up with this list of things to do that does not involve eating (and costs less than RM100). The really cool ones are mine and the sub par sometimes juvenile ones are Ui Hua’s. I only put them here so he doesn’t feel left out.

So in no random order:

• JOIN THE GYM. Most gym’s give out a 2 week free trial. Join the free trial, try out all the equipment and join all the classes. When you’re done, join another gym’s free trial! Try Celebrity Fitness (Bangsar Village 2, One Utama), Fitness First (The Curve, John Hancock, etc) or True Fitness (Section 14, Hartamas).
• BAT AWAY. Go to the batting cage at One Utama new wing. It’s only about RM30 for 15 minutes (I think around there). It’s loads of fun and good for letting off some steam!
• GET FREE COUPONS. Scan through local magazines and look for coupons for free stuff like massages, manicures and facials. Or alternatively you can check out the information counter at shopping malls. They always have these discount or free coupons from their vendors. Go wild!
• MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. Learn how to make and play a musical instrument.

Building Musical Instruments.

Musical Craft Projects.

• GET AN EDUCATION. Randomly go into a college and attend a class.
• DRAW. Draw on pavements with chalks till you’re chased off.
• TWIST A BALLOON. Learn how to balloon twist. This is surprisingly fun to do!

Balloon twisting 101

Balloon twisting instructions

• URBAN LEGENDS. Test out urban legends to see if they’re true. Check out SNOPES and browse through their urban legends. Coke itself has about a gazillion legends!
• GO GAMEY. Play board games like Cranium, Risk or Taboo. Incidentally if anyone wants to play Cranium please contact me. We’re looking for people to play with (uh yes, did I just advertise that even banded together Ui Hua and I still don’t have enough friends to play a board game?? Yes Watson, I think I did).
• ULTIMATE FRISBEE. Find a couple of friends and play ultimate Frisbee. Good exercise and loads of fun!

And there you have it! I’m sure doing any of the above can keep you entertained for sometime. And best of all, it doesn’t involve much cash.

But, if it doesn’t here are a few more things you can do:

• Go to Borders, MPH or Kinokuniya and read for free.
• Play Paintball! Not as cheap as the rest, but if you have enough people you can have a good game for around RM60 per person.
• Go to a playground and go on all the rides.
• Go to a shopping mall, sit on the kiddie rides and see how long it takes before you get kicked off.
• Learn origami and gift your friends origami animals as birthday presents.
• Visit the SPCA or PAWS and play with the animals.
• Visit the ISA and play with the inmates (err… I don’t know how much trouble we might get for this one! And in case some of you didn’t get it, it’s a joke! Geez!)
• Go to the electronic store and set all the alarms to go off at the same time.
• Go to the toy store and put the dolls in lewd positions.

Got any more to add?