Almost 3 weeks after my diving trip to Mabul and Sipadan, I’ve finally sorta figured out how to do simple editing with iMovie. Below are two videos compiled from multiple shootings both under and above water with my canon S90 compact camera.
The above video are edited from multiple dives at Kapalai and Sipadan where we encountered many turtles, grouper, huge ball of jackfish, sharks, and even a little pygmy seahorse. What you can hear from the video was exactly all one can hear while diving. Bubbles and the sound of you sucking that air via regulator, ahh.. tranquility.
This is making me miss diving again!
As mentioned in this post titled Mabul and Kapalai under 18 meters of water, we had an awesome party at Uncle Chang’s dive lodge in Mabul on the first night we stayed there. Now there’s the video evidence.
Irene, Jen, Lynn, Chan, and Gun were all awesome and made the trip that much better too. I can’t wait to go back there again!
A few weeks ago I had a chance to go in front of a HD video camera for the first time of my life, with proper production and all that jazz. It was a shoot for the Astro (though only to be used online, but a commercial nonetheless). The video was used to promote Astro B.yond services during the blogger’s night out last week.
mic up, and ready to roll at Desa Park City
The shoot wasn’t too difficult, I had to do 3 takes. The first had a bit of discontinuity, and there were people walking behind the scene on the second, otherwise I’d say it went pretty smoothly. I guess having been acting on stage before gave me a bit of an advantage. It was quite fun even though the weather was melting us.
On the 13th of January, 11 of the #porkgang members went to the Astro B.yond blogger’s night, and the video was played in full HD. If you click on the HD button in the original video here, you’ll be able to see a pimple just below my nose. This whole HD thing is a bit too clear, gah!
we had a blast and Eric won the 32″ TV with 1 year’s Astro B.yond
The event was held and Modesto Hartamas and we had quite a blast. Eric, Horng, Gareth, Terence, and me also teamed up to participate in the “murder mystery” competition and came up on top. At the end we had to compete against each other and it was Eric who walked away with the 32″ LCD TV and a year’s subscription for Astro B.yond services. (He ended up spending us a big meal at Cristang)
We had quite a blast at the event, danced silly and basically didn’t leave till the whole place was almost empty. Haze, Jaclyn, Kerol, Cheesie, Ruby, Kim, and Kerol made up the rest of the gang. The OBC lady Miss Suanie, and the ganas FA were missing though, I’m still waiting for an event where all 13 (lucky number!) of us shows up.
Some of you might know that I am quite a consumer of pork and lard. Things that aren’t exactly healthy, but so tasty I just couldn’t help myself. Everyone has their own guilty pleasures, and pork crackles (or pork rind/pork scratching) happen to be one of mine.
Mr. Porky pork crackles, from UK
Cheesie knows this fact rather well, which was why she gave me a packet of Mr. Porky pork crackles she obtained from a friend who came back to Malaysia from UK a few weeks ago.
For the uninformed, pork scratchings is basically pork skin with a layer of fat that is seasoned with salt and baked until most of the liquid fat is drained off. The resulting snack is mostly dry but with a hint of fat you can still taste, it is quite salty and porky. Without saying, this thing goes very well with beer.
It’s actually almost like a cross of fried lard (chu yau cha) & salted fish, in a very good way!
I didn’t manage to procure a can of cold beer to go with this little packet of goodness. Perhaps the next project would be self baked pork scratching as suggested by Kim (who also bought me a packet of pork scratching from UK sometimes last year, but I finished it before having a chance to take a picture).
From my trusted and very handy Webweb dictionary (anyone with a PC should download a copy from wordweb.info):
Naked: Having no protecting or concealing cover
Coconut: Large hard-shelled oval nut with a fibrous husk containing thick white meat surrounding a central cavity filled (when fresh) with fluid or milk
highly skilled professional at work
While walking at Carrefour in Tropicana City Mall with Mellissa, Suanie, Horng, and Kerol, we came up to this dude who was manning a stall with a stash of coconut at the back and rows of plastic container with shelled coconuts in front of him. Yes, shelled also mean removed from shell, English is funny like that, go figure.
suanie gave her seal of approval
We were curious on how that is done and stood there to find out. Apparently the procedure is not overly complex:
pick a coconut
use a machete with power and precision to cut the coconut till a ring of flesh shows
use a sharp plastic blade to separate the meat from the shell
make sure there’s a crowd watching
flip the naked coconut high up and catch it with a plastic container
profit!
The first time I saw this was over 10 years ago back in Penang, but it seems that they are gaining popularity only recently. Very cool to see the way it is done though.
action shot of naked coconut to container sequence
After the performance which I took a video of (and somehow a crowd had built up), suanie felt that we couldn’t just leave without buying a couple coconuts from the fella. So she did, RM4 for one, and supposedly RM 7.60 for two but we didn’t get the discount somehow at the cash register. Oh well.
so you know this isn’t from the factory!
After having the coconut chilled in the freezer for about an hour, it was just the most awesome thing in the hot afternoon. Pure coconut juice without anything else, and that glorious firm and delicious coconut meat all for the taking. *slurps*
Almost 1.5 years ago, I had an encounter with Chipster, actually, lots of Chipsters! Perhaps the following picture might explain a lot more than I could. However, I was not-very-narrowly beaten by another guy who walked away with the MacBook in the competition! Hmph
yes, there’s alot of Chipsters here
At the same time, I wrote another entry titled Lord of Chipsters for the same contest in a different category. It was a comic style story that was pirated inspired by JRR Tolkien’s famous trilogy. Well, I didn’t win that one either, but here’s another picture for you.
Hohoho lord of Chipsters!
But as they say, third time is the charm, so this time around I am really keeping my fingers crossed with the latest Chipster contest I joined. Chipster SuperStar Contest!
First of all, lets look at the prizes:
Grand Prize: MacBook Air x 1
First Prize (x3): iPod Touch
Consolaton Prize (x16): iPod Nano
Furthermore, the grand prize and first prize winners will be featured in the finale movie on TV3, that’s national TV by the way! Winners will be determined by number of votes, so please please go to the website and cast your vote. If you think mine is pretty good, VOTE FOR ME please.
Chipster SuperStar’s very awesome movie making interface
Unlike most other contests involving creations of TVC/movies, Chipster has really made it very simple to participate. The interface is so good I must say I am very very impressed (speaking from a guy with IT background).
All you have to do is upload pictures of yourself and your friends and crop them with the supplied online tool to create your casts. Next you choose the story you want your cast to appear in (4 to choose from), add in the actors from your cast list, and then come up with the dialogues in comic style, and you are done with the TVC.
The whole process takes less than 15 minutes, very sleek, very efficient!
The only thing left to do is to click the submit button when you’re done, and key in the Unique Code you can find in every bag of Promotional Chipster Superstar Contest Pack. Here’s my Matrix inspired TVC (well since I just went to the hair saloon). Check it out!
The contest runs from 13th April – 8th June, and the voting period starts from tomorrow, 9-19 June. Time to vote, make it happen!
p/s: ok maybe there *might* be some better videos out there, do check them out and cast your votes.
This is my little space on the web where I mainly share my adventure looking for things that go into my stomach, publish some of my attempts in photography, and write about a lot of absolute nonsense!
Photos from recent posts are mostly taken with Nokia N86, Canon S90 and Canon 400D.
