Laptop fixed. Got my files back. Preparing last travel post on Tana Toraja.

Real shit.

More dead people and a pink buffalo coming up.

After Cheeso’s spooky encounter with the Chipster Ghosts two years ago, she has decided to take her adventure one step further. She emerged back on the earth and reincarnated herself as a sailor in the sea of Currybean.

Her sole and purposeful mission is to search for the best secret ingredient in order to perfect the recipe for a soup that is to be served to the almighty Curry King.

The story begins with Captain Cheeso looking out for the legendary treasure box. Inside, it is said to contain the most powerful ingredient to a perfect curry that will make the most macho King swoon with love.

With the wise guidance of her, erm, trusty yet sometimes unreliable telescope, she spotted a desert island, which she suspects might be the exact location the said treasure chest has laid over the last 920 centuries.

She then sends her pirates in crime to dash to the island with great swiftness for the much sought-after mystery.

Unfortunately, none of the great heroic stories can ever be told without the existence of a villain.

Cue, in this case, the Tomopus. This rather peculiar creature  has strong and robust arms and legs, with which it can squash its victims into what resembles bloody tomato puree within nanoseconds, if you excuse the irony.

However, faced with such a vicious enemy, Captain Cheeso and her pirate crew fight on valiently with great spirit and rather unorthodox choices in weaponary – cheesenen balls,  knivies, forks and spoons!?

Will they win? Or will they all turn into bloody tomato puree by Tomopus? Who would have the triumphant pride to bring home the prize in the end?

Watch the movie to find out the ending. I’m not gonna spoil it for you.

Well, the good news is, you can direct your own movies and be a Chipster Superstar! The contest is open for Malaysians and Singaporeans, and it ends 8th June, 2009.

The prizes include two MacBook Air, 5 ipod touch and 24 ipod nano. 

To enter the contest, you just need to register, choose a movie theme, upload a few pictures of yourself and/or your friends as cast, and insert a few captions. That is all　!The winner even gets to appear in the finale movie on TV3!  talk about fame!

More info, go to Chipster!

Now you need to buy lotsa lotsa Chipster pack, get the unique code and and participate in the contest!

＾＾

Had the most unproductive long weekend ever. But fulfilling. It’s weird, cuz all i did was sleep and watch plenty of DVDs and play Desktop TD Pro again all day, and i won!!! And watched X-Men Origins:Wolverine! So happy cuz the whole film focused on Wolverine!!! It was quite good, but all owes to Hugh JackhandsomeMan of course, without which the movie would have been marginally atrocious.

Everything seemed to be against my blogging. Laptop not fixed, then blog doesn’t work. When blog finally works, internet is shit. When internet is finally back up (after restarting my modem like one hundred quillion times), Flickr doesn’t load.

So i can only post the few that was successfully uploaded few days ago.

Eh wait. Flickr ok d.

Here are pictures for a hairshoot. At the salon.

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Then shoot the next day. With Redmummy.

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I like this picture but they didn’t use this. Isn’t it funny they always choose the pictures you hate the most to go up.

The ad is out in Female and Nu You but then my scanner not working (see, told you everthing is in my way of blogging) so post next time la.

I feel like eating Mentaiko.

By the way, newly added to my gorgeous dressing table is DKNY’s latest fragrance, Be Delicious Fresh Blossom. And it is pink!!!

Arrgh so cute ^^

Always liked DKNY’s Be Delicious series, not just because of the reference to apple and the cute bottle, but also because of the kind of dewy, sweet citrus scent i adore. But this new Fresh Blossom is something different. It’s cleaner, more flowery than citrus and more romantic than sweet. Like a young girl grown into a full woman.

Notes: Grapefruit, Cassis, Apricot, Muguet, Rose, Jasmine, Apple, Blond Woods, Smooth Skin Accord.
Verdict: Very floral, feminine, and light, like just fresh out of a flowery bath. Would love to wear it together with a sundress to tea parties! <3

Here’s your chance to win a bottle of DKNY Be Delicious Fresh Blossom 50ml fragrance worth RM215! Check out the Mom and I Look-alike contest HERE.

Sulawesi post is on hold because laptop screwed up, and i am hoping to recover the files.

So i got nothing to blog now!!! I searched my back up hard disk trying to see if there’s any interesting pictures i can blog about, and i found these.

A shop in Shanghai. A very nice and chic dessert bar, except for the awful name.

Arrrghhh what to do now. Boring Thursday afternoon. I think i’m going to read an awfully book and then eat my awfully lunch.

After staying up till late in our hotel room waiting for our hair to dry (because no hair dryer),  we had to wake up early the next day to continue our journey.

This is Tanjung Bira, the White Sand Beach.

A few kilometres away is this boat making place. I thought it was like a proper boat factory or something we were gonna visit, but no.

Just like that. A wooden tent covered with dried leaves and a huge boat in making inside.

This place is crazy. The whole freaking boat is hand-made using the traditional way. There’s no technical drawing or masterplan for the boat, they do everything according to their sailor instict. They feel the boat.

No nails used on the boat also because they would get rusty in the sea. We were told a lot of sailor superstitions and customs. For example, after giving birth to a baby, the mother would throw the placenta into the sea so that in the future, her son would become a great and brave sailor because now his soul and body is part of the sea.

This man is sitting on the “backbone”, ie the most important part of the boat. You see the little white thingie on the wood?

At first i thought, who turf left a freaking oneh oneh on the wood, so messy and what if i accidentally sat on it it would look like i just shat in my pants. Later we were told that this is an “offering” to the wood. See the X mark the oneh oneh is sitting on? That’s the “heart” of the tree/wood, and it is treated to a little delicacy for good luck.

This is the inside of the boat. See how raw and traditional the boat making process is. Axes, hammers are used. And the most modern tool in the entire place seen was probably the chain machine. A huge boat like that cost about 500 million Rupiah, which is about, RM160,000. And it takes about 6 months to one year for them to finish building a boat.

A boat which is almost ready. Love this picture.

After that we drove another godknowshowmany hours to this village called Ammatoa (means Old Father) in Kajang (the real Kajang in Indonesia!).

We were all told to wear black today, because the villagers are also known as the “black community”. It’s a protocol to wear dark color.

Every house in this village is on poles and built with just wood and bamboo and whatever natural material. They live harmoniously with the nature (there. i’m getting my dose of spiritual connection with rocks and trees here. what turf), and no modern facilities were in sight. Means of transportation are their own feet and horses.

Wa. like an illustration from a Malay story book i read in primary school.

Kutu catching what turf. The thought kutu makes me shudder.

Ok this is embarrassing please don’t laugh but I remember long long time ago i had kutu too and they shaved me bald. I also remember they sell these really narrow wooden combs which is the kutu expert combs. ARGGGH! Ok change topic.

A family in their house.

Seriously i wonder what kind of entertainment they have. They have got no TV, no radio, no nothing. Play with horses and chicken i guess.

See. Horses and chickens in front of a house.

I miss KFC. >_<

A hyena and 3 kids peeking curiously out of the window. No la. it’s a dog.

Day 3.

I skipped a huge part because we drove godknowshowmany hours to see some museum which i don’t think you would be interested in. Which i was a bit tulan, to be honest, and was secretly cursing in my heart about the hot weather and sweaty feeling and hunger then suddenly got afriad and stopped cursing immediately because they say if you have evil thoughts especially in the jungles, the spirits will make sure you go round and round and round the jungle and lost forever so i shut turf myself up in my heart.

We stayed at Sengkang that night, and the next day went to see some silk factory, by factory i mean a wooden house with few traditional wooden weaving machines where young Indon girls who gets paid RM13 a day or so pushing and steping on them weaving 12 hours a day, and then we spent about like another godknowshowmany hours in a textile shop before we drove another godknowshowmany hour to this other place.

On the way, we passed by a wedding.

We got down just to snap a few photos, but then all the people there were like soooooooooo hardcore friendly they invited us in (kind of by force), eagerly signalled us to sit down/have tea/take pictures/go closer to stage and asking us all sort of questions curiously.

So karerful!!!

They look like the Bali chiak chiak dancers.

Then we waited for the bride and groom to arrive. It was best timing. Like we were specially arranged to this event liddat.

Dressed in traditional costumes. Apparently you have to be very rich to hold such a glam wedding. The guy is 25 or so, whose family is in the Chocolate business. Girl is 19 year old.

Again, we were invited to go in front to take exclusive photos, i dungeddit why the people here soooooooooo friendly one? I mean if some random strangers crash my wedding i would have called security to escort them out lo! And maybe smash their huge ass cameras into pulp in the process. Like seriously wtf this is my wedding man just go turf away.

After enough picture taking, we went back to our van because we were kinda in a rush and were behind time to go to the next destination. But then the tour guide came and asked us to return because the host insisted to belanja us makan.

So we went. And were presented with like 1000 different kinds of desserts. There was this pumkin thing (neh the orange color one that looks like nangka) was super nice.

I feel very touched la. People there really seemed so genuinely hospitable.

After X hour, we arrived at a villa up the hill called the Bampapuang.

Very very nice. The setting was very Bali.

But then we didn’t get to stay here. T_T

We had our lunch and continued our journey to Tana Toraja, which was gonna be the hightlight of our trip.

We were supposed to witness some really special funeral in Tana Toraja, if there happened to be one.

I mean, after driving 7 hours or so, somebody’d better die.

Oh Makassar, Makassar.

Landed at Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport. See i so kalerful.

Again it was a FAM trip sponsored by the Indonesia Embassy and Air Asia to promote this new tourist destination in Indonesia, hopefully it would be a popular and well visited spot in the near future, like how everybody is going to Krabi now when i hadn’t even know it existed just 2 years back.

Makassar is the capital of South Sulawesi. It is hardly a popular tourist place, hence the rather miserable journey. I have only been to one destination in Indonesia and that is Bali. Makassar is nothing like Bali.

I was there for 6 days, together with other journalists from different publications. I doubt anyone of them can write as honest as i do, because nobody can write like, omfg bloody hell this place is shit, and get published in NST. But i feel bad because i know it was the best we were given, but i honestly think they needed a far more advance infrastructure system and basic facilities to make it a decent tourist place.

Everyday we traveled more than at least 5 hours (sometimes like, 10 hours) in a van together from places to places. I just slept throughout. And the each time van finally stopped, i would jerk awake feeling excited, because it would be either lunch or dinner time. Ocassionally it stopped by a Mosque, we spent some time, hopped back onto the van and continued our journey. There were times i thought secretly to myself, oh god please, i don’t wanna travel another 3 hours just to see another bloody museum!

The first two days were a little tough. I agonized secretly and it did cross my mind that i wanted to go home. I mean, how could traveling be so miserable? Then i recognized this familiar feeling and i was shocked when i realized this was what i felt a year ago in a certain competition. Oh come on. I’m on a bloody holiday!!!

By the third day however, i discovered something in me that encouraged me to start enjoying this trip. And i did. The places we went to, became more and more interesting. Especially when the local people treated us with warm hospitability. Strangers giving us broad smiles and i just thought people there look so worry-free, happy and innocent.

Although, of course, i still prayed to be checked into a better hotel each day.

Here’s the first day of the trip.

Yvonne from Air Asia.

Went to Paotere, a harbour in the north of Makassar where traditional Buginese sailing boats (pinisi) load and unload their cargo.

Goreng pisang, anyone.

It was omfg hot.

It says: Cuci muka/Kencing RP1,000. Harap Jujur.

Haha.

We then continued to travel like, maybe 5 hours or so around the coast of South Sulawesi to Bira Beach.

Boats by the sea.

They produce seaweed!!!

Naked boys having the fun time of their life in the water.

They shouted for our attention then posed for us. Sooooo adorable.

Stopped here for dinner! We had the famous Nasi Padang.

30 over dishes. Take only what you like.

But the food was so so only la. You know why?

Because it is called Restoran Sederhana.

Then continued to drive drive drive. After a few hours of super bumpy and rocky roads or so, we finally reached Bira Beach. There were two things that took me to utter shock.

1. It had the mostestestest beautiful starry sky i have ever seen in my life. I couldn’t capture it with my camera. But i swear it was such a sight i thought i walked into a painting.

But i must at least find a picture from the net that comes close to that to show you how breathtaking it was.

Something liddis.

Ok. Second shocker.

Right under the starry sky stood our hotel chalet resort accommodation for the night.

I think this pic somehow came out very glamorized.

I mean. If we really had to stay here, i would die. I would really die. Because i wouldn’t dare to breathe in case something poisonous from the ceiling dropped into my nostrils, or develop an imaginary fatal allergy towards the bedbug/dust mite whatever and die of a horrendous itch. And i wouldn’t drink because the water there tasted funny, and i would avoid drinking at all cost because i refused to go to the toilet.

Because this is how the toilet looked like. And there was no shower.

I almost cried. I swear. I felt like a 5-year-old who just got deprived of her daily lollipop. We spent the whole day at the sea side and my skin feels like lizard skin wtf and my hair was tangled and sticky like gooey seaweed ew and all i needed was a NICE SHOWER. HOT WATER. ARGH I WANT TO GO BACK TO MALAYSIA!!!!!!!

T_T

In the end, thank God, no, thanks to our embassy entourage, they reckoned they ought to check us in to a more comfortable place, and did so immediately.

So we moved to this other  hotel chalet resort cottage place, which was a lot more erm… acceptable, but still, without water heater and shampoo.

Anyway, after dinner Yvonne and i went on a frantic search for shampoo, and i almost shouted in hysteria when we found this little shop that sells shampoo packets. They were like RM0.30 each.

That, was my dose of luxury of the day.

To be continued. Stay cheesed.

We went there on 23rd December, a public holiday. It was the wrongest day of the 365 lot one could ever choose to go to Disneyland.

Just pictures!!! Cuz everyone knows how Disneyland is like! Oh btw, this year (i mean last year) was Tokyo Disney’s 25th anniversary!!

Lotsa pictures ahead, click for more!

Like i said i’m pretty addicted to purple lately! I wanted to do another make-up post but i don’t have much time! So just a few pictures of my purple make-up. ^^

Omg i have found the perfect contact lens! I bought it from Taipei, it is called Max Max, very very cheap, only RM30 or so. And it is sooooo comfortable and it looks much more mesmerizing than any other brands i’ve ever used. I love it.  But then again, i don’t know if you can get it here. Good luck!

Purple eyeshadow.

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*next*

I ran a looooooong, instensive, profoundly comprehensive shower ( i would love a bath or an ofuro session, but i don’t have it at home) that involved loofah, spa-quality shower gel, body scrub, bath sponge, complete with different types of body lotion and moisturizing cream thereafter.

I swear i saw grey water running down my feet.

Is where i am right now. My 5th day. Based on the information (or the lack thereof) on its wikitravel entry, i have managed to force myself to expect non-princess treatment during the trip.

When you downgrade your expectation to like, 20% out of the whatever 100% you imagined in the first place, you feel pretty safe about it. Surely it couldn’t be that bad, you thought to yourself. It’s like when you don’t wanna jinx something, you start to imagine something going the complete opposite direction, but hoping secretly and perhaps subconsciously that it doesn’t turn out like how you counter-imagined it. It’s a pretty twisted sick theory I know. But surely you can relate to that because surely it happened at some point in your life before?

Let’s just say that the definition of the word luxury here means having body shower cream and hair dryer in your hotel. So far, only one (satu, yat, ichi, yi) hotel has got some funny smelling shower cream and zero hotel has hair dryer. Indonesian girls like to sleep with wet hair?

I know by heart now, that I am most definitely a diva traveler. And I most deserve to be a diva traveler. I am not born in this world for mosquito nets and sunburn and splinter in the toe and out-of-order aircons and stains on bed sheets and cold showers (kill me) and soaps that make your skin feel like bricks and squat toilets with floaties on top and all the oh let’s get spiritually in touch with the trees and rocks crap.

For the past 5 days I have been using my expensive facial wash as body shower (ouch), hand cream as lip balm (yucks) because I couldn’t find a convenience store that sells the aforementioned stuff I needed and endured an inhumane lack of electronic communication activities. I must, however, give the tour guide and the officials good credit because they tried the best they could to accommodate each of us. The local people here are sooooooooooo nice. Like, nice beyond anything i can possibly show my gratitude for. Certainly not by bitching about how crap my hotels were. The people here are incredibly friendly, helpful and hospitable it makes my heart warm. In fact they are so nice they make me feel tearily guilty about feeling like crap. But that doesn’t change the fact that this place is still planets away from meeting my diva traveler standard. So it is me. It’s ME. IT IS ME.

So I have worked out that i deserve my feather pillows (and perhaps some high quality non allergic buckwheat ploh pillows) and branded shower crème and designer welcome chocolates and super speedy wireless broadband free of charge and exotic fresh fruits in front of my coffee table and canggih toilets complete with seat warmers and bidet functions and 24 hour butler service and a 7-11 within a 500 meters radius. And stay first hand, personally connected with credit cards and civilization.

I assure you that if you don’t have that diva traveler in you (like how everyone claims oh i don’t need fancy hotels i am comfortable with backpackers blah blah i don’t mind leeches in my arse, whatever), you would love this place. Really one. I will show you the good side of it i promise. But right now it’s just…

It’s me. It’s just me.

T_T

Since so many of you requested for some fashion tips! I don’t have any big tips but this post is about how you can make the simplest thing work by mixing and matching. The basic items are the simplest spaghetti top and a pair of really flattering jeans.

Tips: Every girl needs a pair of perfect jeans that is simple, essential and most importantly, flattering to her body.

Recommendation: Curves, latest design from Levi’s® Red Tab collection. Only for girls!!  As the name suggests, it has been specially designed for girls who love their shapely forms.

What i’m wearing: Slim cut of Levi’s® Curves. I find it most fitting, stretch my legs waaaaaay long and it eccentuates the silhouette!

I will illustrate 5 ways to glam up the simple combination of said top and jeans. Today’s theme would be pink and purple. Very girly! 🙂

#1–Sweet School Girl

Pink blazer + Matching hair band + Race Queen Boots

If you dare! Every girl deserves to look girly and young. ^^

#2 Casual College Day

Purple cardigan + Sneakers + Sling bag

Easy and very very comfortable.

#3 Day + Night

This outfit combination can be carried from day to night, with a touch of darker make up and perhaps, a party purse.

#4 Street Chic

Pink mini corset + boots

Very japanese lo.

#5 The Girl in the Purple Scarf

Scarves are sooooo good to play with. There are like 383277 ways of using a scarf differently but maybe i will leave it for next time.

Silk tie-dye scarf + matching necklace + purple pumps + purple tote. Maybe i went a little purple overboard, but the entire look is very feminine! =)

That’s all for today!

Levi’s® Curve, these low-rise jeans come with a new round-top block that fits snuggly on the butt and hips

Comes in three different cuttings— slim, straight or boot–cut, and is available in both stretch and non-stretch versions, the mid to dark finishes for this collection range from the subtle worn-in look to broken-in washes inspired by ‘vintage finishing’.

Have you found your perfect jeans yet?

I remember back in college day we had to do a lot of assignments that were based on Australian syllabus (from Curtin). It was quite tragic because there were so irrelevant i had absolutely no idea how to do it except to refer and extract and paraphrase information from the internet, as plagiarism was simply not a wise option. 😉

And then in one of the advertising module, we actually had to do an ad for a (imaginary) night club in Fremantle. Ching and i were like, what turf is  Fremantle?!

3 years later i came here! 😀

Waaa sky so blue my eye balls can turn azure.

Empty street.

Isn’t that crazy? On a Sunday afternoon. Do people in Australia have a life?

Actually the sun was so bright it’s impossible not to squint when posing for photos. But then i spent like 15 mins on my eye make-up so i tahan kao kao also had to take off my sunnies. Don’t waste lo.

The Freo market!!

So kalerful.

Crepe Tim recommended!

While Perth city was shopping, Freo was a makan trip.

We had the MOST OMFG YUMMY PIE ever. At Culley’s.

How come no one told me about it!!!!

Spinach and ricotta pastry.

Pepper steak pie. It was omfg good.

We tapaoed and went under the shade for our pie session.

😀

Wondering what’s next and Flora camwhoring at the back. And then that was when i huge pile of bird shit dropped on Tim’s clean sneaker.

WAHAHHA.

Turfing seagulls.

Like i said. This is the most dangerous animal in Australia. Flora told me a tragic story where she was eating an vanilla ice cream cone and walking on the street back in Melbourne and SUDDENLY GOT FREE CHOCOLATE TOPPING FROM THE SKY!!! WAHAHHA.

So funny ok, with her expressions and all.

While Tim getting stressed over his chocolate coated white sneaker, we went for yogurt ice cream.

Mango yogee. Or something. That’s before i ate it. I didn’t really like it but Flora was like omfg nice.

Walked around at the beach.

Another no squint tahan kao kao pic.

This is one of my favorite pictures!!! Absoutely no PS leveling/saturation. Super awesome.

Ok i dunno how tim can end up taking picture like this one. Maybe he squinted too much.

Haha again.

O.O

And then we went to…

CICERELLO’s!!!

Wa so beautiful!

And we had what everyone asked me to eat!!!

Nah nah nah—FISH OMFG CHIPS!

Ok la thanks for the recommendation i honestly thought it was just okay, plus it made me sick-ish the next day so i can’t say that i am all omfgloveiwannaflybacktoperthtohaveit.

I forgot the chili mussle, so i had it in Ciao Italia instead. That, was omfg awesome.

Turfing seagulls.

Nic drove us all to Cottesloe Beach to walk walk.

You get to watch pretty girls in bikinis for free. But no naked girls.

Looks like a lot of things are free in Australia.

Ok la  THE END i’m very tired.