Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Creating a Budget Music Video

download this track at https://www.facebook.com/dadeft/app_178091127385

Being all inspired to make videos with my new Canon EOS 60D has got me hyped up to make a video before my semester break ends. At times, I will day dream stories in my head about the videos I can produce. It’s easy to imagine stories, but it’s hard to write scripts and to record the video itself.


I won’t say that I have professional equipment but I know it’s sufficient. In this post, I’m just going to talk about how I made my MV just to share my thoughts and knowledge with you. My equipment line up was simple.

  1. Canon EOS 60D
  2. Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS (kit lens)
  3. Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II (cheapest Canon lens in the market, but awesome)
  4. Tamron 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5 (discount on Amazon.com)
  5. Zoom H1 (cheapest range but great quality by brand)
  6. 160 LED Video Light (cheap light)
  7. A few tripods and gorillapods.



Zoom H1


Samsung Galaxy S2 Metronome Beats

I’ll be honest. This is actually more than enough to make a good video. I’ve seen people out there like Dreambitious, The Salad Show and other college film productions making great videos with just a dSLR and their kit lenses only. But if I have these lenses so, why not use them?

Before making the video, we needed the soundtrack to be the backbone of our video. Aaron a.k.a. A.RON wanted to do a cover by Teddy Geiger, For You I Will. Do note that this video was only made by me and Aaron. I went to Aaron’s house to do the audio recording. We set up the Zoom H1 onto a tripod at the corner of his room and padded its surroundings with pillows and blankets. This was done to prevent echoes from bouncing back on the walls. To prevent any other external sounds, we turned the fan off and also the air conditioner.





All of the sounds were recorded separately. For instance this acoustic cover involved 1 guitar and 1 vocal recorded separately. A pair of headphones was plugged into the Zoom H1 for monitoring purposes. In one ear, Aaron also plugged in another earphone as that was used as a metronome. The metronome was an Android App on my Samsung Galaxy S2 called Metronome Beats. It was used to make sure that his timing was accurate which makes editing and post processing easier.



The earphone was added under the headphone. 

Basically, one instrument must be recorded on perfect timing before another instrument or vocals come in. If you record for a band, the drummer will do his recording first before the other instruments and the vocals will be last. In this case, we recorded Aaron playing the guitar first while guided by the metronome.
For the vocal recording, we used the recording of the guitar instead of the metronome in the earphones. The headphones as usual was for him to monitor himself during the recording. Both recordings were then combined and added with certain sound effects.


On another day after the song was ready, we started shooting our MV. We decided to go to Sunway Pyramid car park roof top to shoot. It was a cloudy day, but dramatic too. We had no script as we just wanted to shoot random scenes. I think this isn’t a good idea as it’s always better to have a script ready. Doing that will save a lot of time. Another tip for creating an MV is to always have a backbone track. A backbone track, in my terms, means to have a full video of that song taken in one take. It doesn’t matter if it’s a still or on a dolly, but just have one video rolling throughout the song. This is a backup plan during post production as sometimes when editing, you will find out that you don’t have enough scenes, you can just take any from the backbone scenes. Backbone scenes also can be used as main scenes, intro and outro too.



Above: Shooting a scene on the roof top
Below: I use Magic Lantern in my 60D


Do check online or magazines to learn good camera angles, rule of thirds or many other tips in filming. A normal advice is to always keep your camera as stable as possible, which I still need to work on a lot. It is advised to use lenses with Image Stabilizers as much as possible. Do take note that post processing is important in making an interesting video. My thought at first was to not apply colour correction at all to my video to keep it natural, but instead I decided to add leave colour and set a cool temperature to my video. It’s all up to you.

This was what I had in my mind while doing and learning from making an MV. I hardly read articles on videos and photography, which is a bad thing, as I prefer to try things on my own and learn from them. If you have any more tips or suggestions to improve my video, do comment below.

Thanks.

If you notice, there was a lot of jitters in my video during motion. This was a known irreversible error in the video editor. Fixing it will result in redoing the whole video again. This is one downside of this MV. 


Like it? Subscribe to The BOAT or follow me on Twitter @andriantam
Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TamsUpProductions

Saturday, February 09, 2013

Chasing the First Sun of 2013

It has been so long since I blogged, and I truly believe that I have said this so many times. Perhaps I'm not committed to this blog, or I'm just not the writer type and love to just take photos instead. But to be honest, I love to share my stories to anyone. As I always believed, I live life by experience compared to books or by just sitting at home or being in a classroom. Of course all mentioned just now are as important as they exist, but not as effective as living a dream or breaking boundaries in your life. Nevertheless, I will keep trying to blog and submit articles to magazines, hoping that it brings good to myself and others, and improve in my own writing skills.

As every year goes by, a new year is always felt as an event where we change or plan to be better throughout that new year. People will list down their new year resolutions and plans to whatever they dream of. As for me, my goal is to keep up with my results, improve my literacy, social and be more fit and stronger. If you know me, I'm called a stick or Pai Kuat, which means pork ribs. There's nothing to worry if you call me that, I'm an open person and not offended easily.

Now back to my story. The celebration of the new year, 2013 just passed as if it wasn't a new year. It just felt like a new day as it is everyday. It could be because of 2 things. One is that my university semester ends at the end of January, and the continuity of classes and studies made it felt as if it was a routine. Before this, school holidays made Christmas and New Year bold, but looking forward to exams that are coming made it feel as if it was just another day. Another reason could be that I didn't sleep that whole night during the new year. Me and a few friends rented 2 cars and decided to chase the sun.


On the last night of 2012, we left our campus at about 7pm headed towards BDC in Kuching for BBQ Steamboat Buffet. The restaurant name was Swan Teem BBQ Steamboat. If you click the link, it will bring you directly to its Foursquare page for you to easily locate :) They have a wide variety of meat like pork and chicken, some are plain meat or you can also choose the marinated ones which taste better. They serve assorted fishballs or I would call them, flour products, because these kind of food are mostly made of flour. You can barbecue them or boil them in the steamboat. Their cooking pot is unique that the center is used for steamboat and its sides are the grill for the barbecue. Usually the soup is just water so if you plan to go there, do bring your own seasoning or if you will like it to do it our way, you can try this method.

Boil the broth with a piece of lamb in it. Add some pepper and break egg into the soup. It will taste delicious.

We were eating there till about 10pm when we decided to go to Boulevard for some fireworks. We lined up at Ding Tea for a good beverage. I had Hazelnut Milk Tea as I love hazelnut drinks. If you're interested in their menu, here's one from Google.


We were chilling outside in the drizzle, waiting for the fireworks to go out. It was packed and you could see the fire department standing by in case anything went wrong. At the end of the countdown, we saw fireworks light up the sky. It's not as magnificent as those you see in USA, but this is all we have and as long as it makes the locals, or just anyone happy, its good enough. :) I myself was happy to spend time watching it with my loved one :) Happy New Year! :D


Moving on, we went to another mall called The Spring to catch a movie at MBO. We watched Les Miserables, a musical, which caught me by surprise. Though feeling tired late at night and the movie may be a bit slow, it was a great movie after all. It would be much better to see it live, but it had a great plot and the songs were sang very well.


At around 4am, we were at McDonalds, Kuching for breakfast. There and then, we decided to go to Bako, where the national park is located, to watch the sunrise. The journey was in pitch black. We were driving on trunk roads with no street lights and we were the only cars there. The most interesting part was that we didnt really know where to go. We were looking at Google Maps, trying to guess which way may lead to a beach by the South China Sea, facing East. We got stuck in a village, attempted to drive up a hill and sink into a mud road, which we didn't. We kept searching through the tarmac until we found a spot by the beach. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best we could find. I tagged that place on Foursquare and if you're lucky enough, you may catch the perfect sunrise here.


We were unlucky that day. The night before that was rainy so the day was filled with clouds. We did not see any orange sunrise but just a blue cloudy sky. It was quite upsetting, but on the bright side, we discovered a place we can go and see the sunrise next time. The place is filled with lots and lots of mosquitoes. You will be surprised yourself. It was a swarm of mosquitoes that you can see them hitting your car windscreen when the day got brighter. In the dark when we got down of our cars, we just kept getting bitten constantly. So a piece of advice, park your car nicely and do not get down of your car. :)

When the sky was bright enough, we headed back to the city for our second round of breakfast. I brought my group of friends to a good Wan Tan Mee shop suggested by my friend Calvyn and Hobbes, I mean Rachel, his girlfriend.. Haha. The place was called Master Bong Cafe. This was actually my second time here.. The noodles here have a very good texture, heard it was made out of duck egg and not chicken egg. Their pork is tasty and they have dumplings too, which are just ok. Their Chee Cheong Fun with prawns is good too. A highlight of Kuching if you're looking for food :)









At about 8am, we headed back to campus for a good shower and a long afternoon sleep :) 13 hours of driving did pay off :) Theres nothing wrong if you don't sleep a whole night, but spending it well with a bunch of good people. Don't just sit at home, go out and do something :)

Like it? Subscribe to The BOAT or follow me on Twitter @andriantam
Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TamsUpProductions

Monday, December 24, 2012

Borneo British Parliamentary Championship BBPC


The Borneo British Parliamentary Championship (BBPC) was organised by the UNIMAS Debating Society which I was a part of. This was our first time hosting an international debate competition, and its turnout was quite good. Though many teams around the world registered and only some came to check in, I would say the event was still a success. Many teams backed out, for some reasons that we guessed, was because our championship was right after SDO, which was Singapore's Debate Open. Many teams do not go for championships one right after the other, unless they are really hard core debaters. However, it was great to see some teams and adjudicators turning up right after SDO, it shows how committed they are towards debating. Another reason why the turnout was small is because many people from other countries are not familiar with Kuching but Kuala Lumpur instead. It was perhaps the stereotypical idea that Kuching is a small town and not worth going. But to my surprised, the chief adj, Aji Abu from Singapore, fell in love with Kuching and wished he could stay longer by taking a week off from work. Too bad that it was too late for him to apply leave. Other adjudicators like Ajay Kumar from India stayed another day to visit Orang Utans and take a short sight see around Kuching.

Well here's my part of the story. I was in charge of transportation in the event. All I had to do was to make sure everyone gets to the competition safely. On Friday the 14th, me and a few others from UDS were waiting for Dinesh to get the cars and head off to the airport to pick up a team that was flying in at 3.40pm. I was shocked at 2pm when I received a phone call from Christ University, India saying that they have already arrived and are waiting at the airport. We quickly rushed to the airport in 2 cars as we only had Kancil's, which is a very small car.


 One of the cars ran out of fuel right outside the petrol station

On that day itself, I drove for about 12hours with sufficient rest. I left the university at 2pm and arrived back at 2am. No, it wasn't labor abuse or anything close to it. I enjoyed it as I really love to drive. It felt so much better as the car was rented with UDS funds and its petrol was all covered by them too. The funny part was the car itself. It only had 4 gears! I was surprised. While driving it on the highway for the first time, I was shifting the gears from 3rd to 4th, 4th to *ehh*.. I thought the gear was jammed or something. I finally had a stop at a round about and when I looked at the gear label carefully, it really had only 4 gears! It was really shocking, but the more shocking part was that the car could actually go up to 110km/h on that 4 gears, well that was according to its speedometer. It could be inaccurate.


Kuching International Airport

12 hours of driving was fun. I met a lot of people from different countries, had a good 30 minute chat with them before dropping them off at the "hotel" which was Sarakraf Pavilion, a homestay bungalow.





The next morning, I headed to Faculty of Social Sciences where the competition was being held. Using the 2 kancil's, we transported about 10 tables and 60 chairs. We took a few rounds and each round, we could take 5 tables or 10 chairs. It sounds unbelievable to transport 10 chairs in a Kancil but a good thing about Perodua is that they design their rear seats to fold so that there will be more trunk space.

After that many rounds, I headed off to the airport to take away McDonalds for one of the adjudicators. She didn't have a proper meal on the day before and she's vegetarian so she wanted the McEgg and hash browns. It wasn't actually my job to do that but I just did it as a favor.

I didn't have much to do by 3pm so I decided to head back to my room, have a nap and get ready for a Christmas dinner that night. A blog post of that night will be updated soon.


Intense planning

On Sunday, I was on standby at the competition. Some teams and adjudicators had earlier flights, so I had to send them to the airport. Besides that, there was an unusual morning. The chief adjudicator stayed back at the hotel that morning because he wasn't feeling well. I was told to pick him and another luggage up from the hotel. As I was sending him to the university, I had a good chat with him. His name was Aji Abu and he is a test engineer at Aston Martin Singapore. I was like, wow! He has the privilege to drive those supercars and tune them. His job is to basically set the car to the Singapore road requirements, perhaps in terms of safety or environment protection, but its still a cool job.


Fang with Aji Abu


The final debate!

I was also able to catch the final debate, which was intense. The motion was that THBT suicide is a legitimate tool of protest against the state. Unimas had one team in the finals which was represented by Albert, UDS president and Dinesh. After all the arguments, their team came in 3rd. 



Nasi Goreng Bryani Ayam Penyet

After the results were out, we had dinner at Station 12, which was a Malay restaurant by the street outside of the Pink Mosque. They had great food there. I had Nasi Goreng Bryani Ayam Penyet which was spicy, but delicious. I also tried the nasi goreng sotong penyet which was wonderful. Sotong is cuttlefish and it wasn't rubbery. The squid felt as if it could just melt in your mouth. The tom yam soup was also tasty, so im generalizing that restaurant as one of the best around Kuching. 

It was a long, wonderful and tiring weekend. I went back to the university with good news that presentation was postponed to another day and I had no class in the morning on the next day. Great news and great sleep. :)

Take care :)

Like it? Subscribe to The BOAT or follow me on Twitter @andriantam
Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TamsUpProductions

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Not Taking a Break this Semester Break


I just entered my first semesters mid term break which will last for a week. For the past month, I was looking forward to this week because it will be a week where I can get good rest before I take on the rest of the semester again. However, my break is yes, a break from studies, but not for rest. The moment my break began, on the last day of class, on that night itself, me and my group of friends doing Cognitive Science rented 3 cars and headed up to Kuching. It was a trip of 15 people and it was amazing to see how close we were as friends, a really big group of friends. The initial plan of my friend was to go to The Hills for karaoke but it was too expensive. So instead, we went to walk around Kuching and took a boat across the Santubong river. That night was only just the beginning. The next day had much more adventure :)


I got up around 7.45 that morning. We were supposed to group up at Cempaka at 9am to get into our transport. It was delayed to about 10am but I didnt bother. As long as I got to my destination, Im happy. This trip was again organised by the same previous Chinese society in UNIMAS. They had about 7 cars to bring about 33 people around. First we headed to Jong Crocodile Farm. We arrived at 11am, which was just in time for the crocodiles feeding time. They have feeding shows at 11am and 3pm.


The workers will hang a piece of meat or fish onto a cable that is tied across the pond. The crocodiles in the pond will jump up, trying to grab their lunch. It was such a great sight to see the crocodiles jumping because you dont really get to see crocodiles everyday, but thank God for that.


We spent another hour at the crocodile farm walking around, looking at other animals and ate some snacks. I would like to rephrase 'we' to 'the both of us' :) I have a very special companion who shares the same interest with me and one of it is to travel. Shes really adventurous and really knows how to live life :) I thank God again for introducing her into my life :)


So anyway, we got back into the cars and headed to a town nearby for lunch. Lunch wasnt that great but at least it filled my stomach well, and they had good Chinese tea :) We headed to Ranchan Waterfall soon after. It was about an hour trip, cos we got lost a bit as the convoy got split up. Nevertheless, we arrived at our destination safely. Ranchan had a series of waterfalls and I suggested to go as high as possible because usually if youre at a lower part of the waterfall, you have no idea what shit happened from above :p


We trekked through the forest up the hill to find a higher waterfall. It was just me, Carmen and Jeff, I have no idea where the others went. Jeff also is another adventurous and enthusiastic person, but hes a guy :p Haha. So we reached the end of the trail, took off our shoes and went down into the cold water. We could go much higher following through the rocks but we did not want to leave our valuables far from us. As we were in the water, we sat in it and allowed the water to flow through us. The funniest part also was that the river had fishes. They were small fishes trying to eat our feet. It was like a fish therapy, and it was so ticklish. After awhile, we did get used to it. I have no idea what fish was that but i believed it was cleaning my feet :)


Panchor Hot Springs was our next destination. Getting there wasnt easy as the roads were still, undeveloped. The roads were narrow and it wasnt tarmac. There are still future plans in developing the road. The entrance fee into the hot springs is only RM3 and they have a cafe there. The place is well maintained and clean. It is a natural hot springs pond so the water may look dirty and muddy, but its natural, hot and filled with natural minerals. When i drenched my feet into the water, it was really hot. I had to keep putting my legs up many times, but after awhile, I got used to it and just enjoyed the hot water. Hot springs is good for the body because its said to help in circulating blood flow in the body. People with high blood pressure are not advised to enter the hot springs.


We then headed to Kuching for dinner in the Hong Kong Noodle House located in Chinatown. It was one of my most favorite restaurants because they served dried chili in oil, which was one of my favorite chili. I had pork ribs with champagne and wine sauce and Carmen had the same thing, without the champagne and wine sauce. Both kinda just tasted the same, but it tasted good too. We both also ordered sour soup which was a thick soup with tofu and chicken slices. It was a spicy soup but it taste great and was very filling. Our dinner came up to about less than RM10. Soon, we headed back to campus to end the day :)

Like it? Subscribe to The BOAT or follow me on Twitter @andriantam
Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TamsUpProductions

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Peeling the Banana


I’m quite, but not very, drained as I just got back from a hiking trip at Mount. Gading and hit the waves at Sematan Beach Resort. I am going to blog about the great trip but before this post, I was supposed to talk about the colourful Citrawarna event held last Wednesday in the university in occasion of its convocation. Wow that rhymes… Anyway, why dont I just combine the both of them into one post.


It was a contemplation between attending debate meeting or Citrawarna. Debate was important but Citrawarna is an event described so well that I did not want to miss it. It was also because of the dedication of my friends who were involved and the team by each college, which spent almost every night practicing their act. Citrawarna was also a onetime event to me so me and my friends didn’t want to miss it.

As usual, it started off with speeches and its official launching. There was an opening act and a mini parade by the alumni of UNIMAS before the competition. Soon after, the battle of colours began. It was mostly magnificent.


Each colleges had their own distinct themes, one was focused on the Indian culture as another was focused on the Mexican culture. My college performed a Rio theme and others had their own. I am usually not attracted to such traditional events but I am always attracted to the idea of synchronisation. It was a beautiful sight to see about 40 students from each college putting together a dance performance, boasting creativity and skills.In the end, my college, Bunga Raya, won the overall title for the competition. Im really proud of them and of course, to my friends Phoebe, Qiu Xi, Leo Lim and Joshua Jerome who were part of the performance.  


Moving on to my exciting day trip, it was a satisfying trip. It all started off hilariously. The event was actually planned by some Chinese society in the university and my friend, Jeff, knowing the meaning of my name in Chinese, submitted my name in Chinese, which I did not understand. Yes, I don’t know my own name in Chinese and am a so called banana. Wo Shi Xiang Jiao Ren...

As we were about to leave, I was looking for my name in the namelist, which I of course did not understand. I looked for my phone number instead and signed. As we went on the bus, we had ice breaking and games in Chinese. I did not understand so it was funny actually. We had to introduce ourselves and when my turn came up, I said, “Dui bu qi, wo bu hui chiang hua yi.” That means, im sorry, I cannot speak Chinese. Sorry if I typed the Chinese words wrongly. Anyway, they told me to introduce myself in English, but I told them that I want to try it in Chinese. So then I said, “Wo de ming shi Andrian. Faculty shi FSKPM, program SK.” It means my name is Andrian, faculty is FSKPM and program is SK.

We also played a game in Chinese but I forgot how it went so I cannot describe it. The journey from our 
university to Mount Gading took about 2 hours so for the rest of the journey, I was listening to the music in Carmen’s phone, as she was listening to mine. She’s a good singer and plays the guitar well.
As we reached the main entrance, we got off and quickly started snapping photos. I was busy trying to get internet connection to check into Foursquare. I use it only when I arrive at some grand place or a new place.


We soon began our hike, sweeping through lots of flora and fauna. It is said that the Raflessia, the largest flower in the world, blooms here. Throughout the journey, we did see one of it, but it was black in colour, not red. Perhaps it was dying because they have a very short lifespan, of about 5 days if im not mistaken. You will be very lucky if you are able to see a fully bloom Raflessia in red.

We hiked up for quite a while to reach waterfall No.3. I think it wasn’t a major waterfall as compared to Waterfall No.7 which is at a higher altitude and we were supposed to go there, but we did not have enough time. We were able to take lots of photos and play in the shallow water for a period of time. We soon headed back to the entrance to have our barbecue lunch.


Sematan Palm Beach Resort was our next destination. It took about half an hour to get there. When we arrived, we were so happy to see the beach, its fine soft sand and big waves from the South China Sea. We quickly put our things down and ran into the water. We played a lot, and really a lot, as if the wave was our enemy, we kept making human barricades to fight the waves. It was such a great time.


After much playing, me and Carmen decided to get off shore to have a good cup of coffee at the café nearby. She’s also a coffee junkie like me. We had a great chat about our dreams and interest, including coffee and alcoholic drinks. It was good to have a great companion at a café drinking coffee beside the beach. It’s something that I haven’t done in a long long time.

We spent an adequate amount of time chatting and then we left to go for dinner at Bukit Mata Seafood. The food there was quite good. We had tofu, broccoli, mixed vegetables, butter prawns, chicken and seaweed soup. My friend Xinh Guan had 5 bowls of rice. He aint that big but he swallowed them all up.

It was a great day trip, which I was just informed 2 days ago. I am still hanging on to the words, do not regret what you did, but regret the things you never did. I still don’t know who came up with that quote, but Im still living it. Gonna keep travelling around whenever I can.

Like it? Subscribe to The BOAT or follow me on Twitter @andriantam
Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TamsUpProductions

Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Cognitive Science Orientation

I'll be honest, I mean of course I have to be honest, because what I view shouldn't be manipulated just to be nice or whatever in that case. Just saying.


For the whole week before orientation, I dreaded it because we, cognitive science students, had a lot of assignments to do and I usually revise my studies every night. However, for the whole week, it was all about preparing for orientation or doing assignments. Every night was busy. 3 nights were used to plan my groups performance and 1 night which was excepted was used to attend debate weekly meetings which are usually on Wednesdays. The orientation was from Friday to Sunday and we were only able to fully practice on Thursday.


I'll be honest, I did skip a lecture because of my orientation preparation. As a group leader, I had to at least have a plan in mind, in terms for my group performance. I wasn't feeling that well too anyway. My group was given the task to do a dance performance about Puteri Santubong. It was a traditional song and it was too slow for me. Thank God for its hip hop version by M.I.X., we used their song to have a hip hop part that I thought may make our performance unique. The great challenge was to plan a choreograph for the dance. I have no dance experience besides 3 classes of hip hop at Urban Groove and taking videos of other dancers. On Thursday, I skipped one lecture, which I'm glad I did because I was able to plan a 40 second choreograph in 3 hours, had dinner then spent another 4 hours teaching my team mates the moves. Skipping that one lecture also gave me a breather and helped me get myself back together. The stress of time constraint with assignments and pre-orientation plans was very heavy.


I think I wasn't the only one who dreaded orientation. Many others also complained about it taking too much time or being a waste of time. There were also some who screwed up their presentation last Monday, mostly because of orientation. It was tiring for them and though u might say that a group who knows that they suppose to present on a specific date should be ready early, its about the timing that was very tiring. Even one of my lecturers complained that the orientation was too long and made the students tired. He was upset that he wasn't given the chance to voice out his opinion about the timing.


Anyway throughout the orientation, I kept asking myself, "what am I doing here?" I kept asking myself that because there are so much to do compared to the activities done there. The highlight of the event was to spend time with seniors to ask questions and get ourselves straight. They were focusing on us as a faculty being a family. I have nothing wrong with that but its more of the timing thats a problem. Second, its hard to get everyone to ask seniors questions at a specific time because questions usually arise when there are problems, which will come throughout our whole semester. We already have the mentor mentee and family system, it will be wise to ask for help only when a problem arises. At the orientation, I had nothing to ask and I just listened to what the seniors do in class.


Well for now I only can answer my question by saying that I attended the orientation just to dance. I never performed a dance before and our performance during orientation was a whole new experience for me. Furthermore, my group won 2nd place for the performance that night. Well at least I know that my efforts paid off, but it was also because of the dedication and the cooperation and ability of my team members which brought my group to such victory. My group won the overall prize for the orientation. Quite surprising, but I'm sure my group members deserved it.


So, I still think I went for orientation to dance, play with lanterns for the mooncake festival and enjoy the beach. But there always a story behind every action. The orientation did make an impact to me and the other students. The games and activities held has brought us closer than before. I did have my share of fun. Mr Hafiz speeches always made good sense and it was very rational. They always emphasize that we can never work on our own to gain success. We always need to depend on each other to reach our goals. Orientation has allowed me to know my friends better, make new friends and gain more experience for instance, the dance. Mainly, it also made me be able to take on the challenge of a university student, to be able to overcome any situation and still remain standing. More photos here.

All in all, orientation wasn't bad after all. :)



Oh and I would like to take this chance to wish my course mate, Elvis Yoon, a Happy Birthday :) We celebrated his birthday in one of our universities higher class cafes. We bought a brownie cake for him and we all had a great lunch together :)



Like it? Subscribe to The BOAT or follow me on Twitter @andriantam
Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TamsUpProductions