Was in Krabi the week of New Year with some of my climbing buddies. The trip this time round was a tad bit shorter than my previous trips but I had fun nevertheless!

Hadn’t planned on joining this new gang of climbing buddies initially, but after awhile, I thought “Bugger it. I need a break”. Am really glad I went as the trip reignited my love for climbing :)

Our days were pretty laidback as we didn’t go all out and climb like mad. Feel like I spent more time eating than climbing this time round as we only managed to get in 1 – 3 climbs a day ;p Which is great as it meant I came back to KL well rested.

We stayed at Mountain View Resort in Tonsai and I bunked in with Wendy and Alicia in what I consider as luxurious compared to the huts I’m used to staying in whenever I go Krabi.

Not only were there no bugs in the toilet bowl but the toilet was tiled too! And there was an overhead rain shower! Luxury, luxury!

Indulged in massages (RM20 only!) every other day and one night, at the start of the massage, I thought to myself how much I was enjoying my trip. Not only cause of the food, the great company and the climbs but also because there were quite a lot of women with well defined muscles at Tonsai, which didn’t make me feel like a freak :p

Funnily enough, right after I thought that, the masseuse who was massaging my arms then said to me, “Arms big big, man man”. LOL!! She popped my bubble right there and then!

Here are some of the snapshots taken during the trip and more can be seen in the slideshow below :)

Dum’s Kitchen on Tonsai.

View of the sunset from Tonsai Beach

View of Tonsai Beach from Firewall. On the far right you can see Railey West.

Princess Beach shot from Defile Wall.

C-o-c-o-n-u-t! Yum!

Didn’t have my tripod with me. Handheld shot of the view from the beach a couple of minutes before New Year. Tonsai was packed with revelers and the sky was filled with lanterns which we all lit up :)

Team Malaysia and team Australia right before we got onto the long tail boats on our last day.

Some of the other pics :D

Can’t wait to go again soon :) Not only do I wanna climb more (and lead this time ;p) but I also wanna pig out more. Oh how I miss the fresh coconut, banana pancake, red snapper, green curry chicken ;p

Yours Truly Being Greedy shot by Edmund

Just a quick note to wish everyone “Happy Chinese New Year”! Yes, even those who are not celebrating cause you’ll be enjoying the long weekend ahead ;) Woot!

I just wrapped up my final wedding shoot for the lunar year last night here in good ol’ Kota Kinabalu. Can’t wait to blog about how fun it was! Will get back to regular blogging once I head back to KL by middle of next week, so get ready for an onslaught of blogposts from me then :D

For now, I’m gonna (try to) take a day or two off editing and spend some quality time with the family (and myself!) pigging out on scrumptious CNY feasts!

Have a good one ahead. XOXO

WARNING! EXTREMELY SELF-INDULGENT POST ABOUT ME, MYSELF & I AHEAD. PROCEED WITH CAUTION OR JUST GO TO SOME OTHER WEBSITE NOW :p

I was recently invited to speak during the 2nd National Youth Entrepreneurship Conference which was organised by The Youth Intelligence, Malaysia’s online youth community.

So what was the convention about? I quote an email from Joanne Soo, the programme manager for the convention,
“The Convention, running for the second time after its inaugural launch this year on January, features Malaysia’s youth entrepreneurs under the age of 30 who have successfully made their mark in their various industries. Running in conjunction with Malaysia’s largest youth lifestyle event YOUTH’09, the Convention has and will continue to impact the Malaysian youth community.”

I was flabbergasted and had initially wanted to decline for who was I but a lowly newbie photography, barely 16 months into the industry and knowing nuts about entrepreneurship? But because it involved a free lunch and a chance to rub shoulders with successful entrepreneurs, I said yes lah.

A couple of days after receiving the email, my housemate Ninie excitedly told me that she was invited to speak during the convention too. Haha! What are the chances of housemates getting invited to not only speak during the same convention, but during the same segment (Lifestyle Entrepreneurship) as well?

We received our respective topics about 10 days before the talk and my topic was “The Big Leap of Passion”. I basically had to talk about how I got into photography and how life was like when I was a minion prior to that, yadda yadda yadda. I was also asked to talk about the key points to surviving the photography industry.

Now, to that last point I thought, what do I know about surviving the industry? Nothing, de nada. I’m just going with the flow and doing the best I can at the moment and learning from my mistakes and improving on my weaknesses.

So I skewed it a bit and spoke about what I’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur. Some points which I brought up include;
- don’t be put off by naysayers
- know your strength and weaknesses
- sell yourself, your ideas, your products
- be business savvy
- be versatile

Frankly speaking, I wasn’t well prepared as I had a mountain of pictures to edit (and also cos I spent time catching up with friends after New Year :p) so I only had time to prepare for the talk the night before. On that day itself, Ninie and I arrived an hour plus before our segment and we managed to catch the Media Entrepreneurship talk by Joel Neoh, Joyce Wong and Aimann Faiz.

During the break before our segment (Lifestyle Entrepreneurship) began, Joel who I’ve known since 4, 5 years ago when he used to climb sat down and chit chatted with me for a bit.

Before he left, he said to me, “Anna, remember don’t swear ok?”. He knew that I’m a bit, no make that extremely, foul mouthed. I don’t do it on purpose, I’m just too used to spicing up my vocabulary with Sailor-esque talk ESPECIALLY when I speak in Chinese or when I’m nervous. I said, “Don’t worry brader” and kept on thinking to myself, dontsweardontsweardontswear.

It didn’t work.

I accidently swore twice (or was it thrice?). It was so bloody unprofessional of me to do so and if I could, I would rewind the clock and made my talk abit more formal and not so delinquent.

Lesson learnt. Big time.

And wanting to end my talk on a light note, I did something which I thought was funny but it bombed big time.

At the end of my talk, I said “And now, exclusively for participants of this convention, let me share with you MY biggest secret of being an entrepreneur…..” then a slide with the following picture came up on the screen behind me.

Instead of laughter, I could see that most of their faces had this “WATAFAK?!?!” or o.0 expression.

I super shy dot com dot my weiiiii that time!! Summore had to sit back on my chair on stage after that. Aaaaaarrrgggghhh, shy shy shy.

Besides that, I think the talk went somewhat well. I think.

I would’ve made it a bit more structured and shared more of what I’ve learnt so far had I spent a bit more time on preparing for it. Good experience, definitely something I wouldn’t mind doing again.

During our segment, we all had to sit on stage. I was wearing a dress, something which I hardly ever do and I was just thinking, “Fark, I hope I don’t flash the kids”

All speakers were given a HUUUUUGEEEE frame picture of themselves as a token of appreciation. Urmmm…I have no comment.

Had the pleasure of meeting some participants of the convention and I must say, I admire the fact that these young people are looking into entrepreneurship even before they finish their studies. My hats off to that. When I was their age, I was satisfied with just having a steady job to help me cover my monthly expenses.

With fellow participants of the convention. L-R: Michael, trannie me :p, Caren and Jackson. My arms look scary under this lighting. Wheeee!! :D

One of these admirable youth was Michael Teoh whom I had the opportunity to speak to for a while. Extremely confident and evidently a go-getter, Michael exuded confidence when I was talking to him. Dammit, if only I was that confident instead of talking cock so much when I was younger -_________- Waitaminute, I still do!

In conjunction with the convention, Malaysian Today also featured the speakers. So I got to appear in last weekend’s edition of Malaysian Today :D You can check out the online version of the article here.

I guess that summarises my first-time as a ‘speaker’. Thanks again to the organiser for giving me this opportunity :D Woot!

Credit: Pictures from the event courtesy of www.michaelteoh.com. Pictures of me IN the convention magazine were shot by Sherrie and Beatrice. The one in Malaysian Today was shot by Enrick. Thanks!

P/S: I know some are wondering why I was selected and not some other photographer. There are so much more young photographers out there who are way way better than me in terms of photography, business etc. I think in my case, I was lucky enough to know the right people, be at the right place, at the right time. And I also take decent pictures once in awhile la :p

Have a good weekend y’all!