Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Astro Star Quest 2009 Finals...

After a 4- months-long battle, the winner of Astro Star Quest has been borned last Saturday at Bukit Jalil Indoor Stadium. I was there live as a photographer and I was very pleased with the result for this year's competiton compared to the previous 2 or 3 years. This batch has really got the talent and worked very hard to realize their dream. Congratulations to the top 3 winner, Juztin, Min and Yoke.

[Juztin, Min and Yoke posing with their trophies]
[During an interview at the post-party after the competition]

If Juztin was not overwhelmed by his nervousness, he might have won but Min was sparkling that very night as her performance was stable and did not show any nervousness at all. There was some minor errors that day because of their guest performer, Janice from Hong Kong was not feeling well. Overall, this year's competiton has gained my respect as the contestants won fair and square.

Ps: I just chose to upload this 2 photos because I had taken a total of 955 photos for the whole show, and I couldn't put them up all in here as I am currently very busy with my assignments and might add some more later. Please forgive me. Hehe. Tata. (^.^)

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Presentation Sucks Big Time...

The title says it all. It was the baddest presentation ever in my life. We did a presentation about our trip to Taman Negara today for Popular Culture class and it really got on my nerve. Thanks to my groupmate for doing such a 'marvelous' video which he insisted on editing it since it was his brother's camcorder. The video is about our interviews with the backpackers we met. He said he sacrificed 3 nights of sleep to edit that video and I really wanted to tell him "and this piece of SHIT comes out?". I had been asking him for the video since we came back from Taman Negara as I have to refer to the video to write our report.

Until last Monday (6th of July 2009), he told me the CD is not readable and he had to go up and down to find ways to edit the video. Yee Ling and me were starting to panic because the presentation will start the next day, Tuesday (7th of July 2009). Monday night, he eventually found a way to transfer and edit the video. Luckily we were not the first few groups to present and we still had some time to do some editing.

Wednesday night, he came over and said he had finish editing, and I gave him some comments but he was just too stubborn and did not want to listen. I told him to adjust the volume of the backpackers as they were too soft and he did not, he did not even put subtitles because our lecturer said we have to and I personally REMINDED him not to save as MP4 file as it would reduce the video quality, and he did not listen either.

Thus, all of this led us to be the boringest and dullest group amongst the rest. The lecturer somehow dislikes me and I could feel it since the beginning of this semester and it was more obviouys today. He was laughing while commenting on other groups' presentation, but when it was my group's turn, the smile and laughter were swept right away as we stepped to the front. Luckily, Yee Ling and me did a last minute Power Point slides in class while others were presenting as not to make our presentation dry. We inserted pictures we took during the trip and explain later during presentation.

After the slides, it was time to show the sucky video. I could see my classmates doing their own things and the lecturer's face was as long as a giraffe's neck. I didn't even want to watch my own video as the sound quality was bad, it was pixelated when turned to full screen mode and no subtitles in it.

Our lecturer did not say much after our presentation and I felt a dagger stabbed into my heart when one of my fellow classmates commented "you have to becareful when you want to save your videos in MP4 format". At that moment, I wanted to say "I had REMINDED him, BUT HE WOULDN'T LISTEN", but I just said thank you and left.

Later, I went to have lunch with my friends and they understand how I felt as I already told them everything and they were being honest that our video sucks and uninteresting. I said I felt the same too but there was nothing I could do as someone insisted on doing it on his own and doesn't want me to touch it. They also said that our power point slides saved us. Phew...

Well, I had finish complaining and I have to continue with other assignments as finals are coming. Hope I can pass with flying colors. Wish me luck.