H&N October

Recently I attended the first interview I have ever had in my life at the SPA. In order to apply for a job as a pharmacist, I had to get approval from 3 government departments, the Public Service Commission (SPA), the Pharmacy Board (LFM) and the Ministry of Health (KKM). Weeks before the interview, many of my friends who have gone for it told me that it was very easy and was almost a confirmed pass assuming I have a basic grasp of the job and general knowledge. I was really chilled out for that time.

lol?

Then three-four days before the SPA interview, a friend asked me about my preparation and introduced a few websites as reference. I had a sudden mental breakdown when I started reading. I did not know I was so unprepared, so I started writing notes, memorizing notes and revising my pharmacy stuff. Then came the day of the interview. I joined a bunch of my friends at the Putrajaya office where we were having the interview. There was only one room for pharmacy applicants and I was number 9 in the list, so assuming each applicant took 20 minutes, I would have to wait for 3 hours before my turn. Initially the first few applicants took more than 30 minutes to finish and I was worried they were "interrogated". However after the third applicant, subsequent numbers started moving faster and faster, the interviewers probably realized that they were rushing for time. In a blink of an eye, it was my turn already.

The interview went quite smooth for me. The SPA officer asked me about qualities needed to be a good pharmacist and I stumbled for a while but somehow managed to answer confidently later on. I was also asked about the number of languages I could speak and how fluent I was as them. I suddenly had the feeling that the interviewer noticed my not-so-proficient BM... haha! I will try to improve myself. The KKM officer was really nice to me throughout the interview. She asked me which department I preferred to work in the health ministry and proceeded to ask me more about the role of BPFK based on my response. The part that I was worried about was when the SPA officer started a long line of questions pertaining the NKRA and its role in preventing corruption. I was caught off guard with those questions especially when he asked me to define corruption. I did not know the specific definition, so I went ahead to quote an example, which he acknowledged but told me to read more about it. Phew... I was done with it finally!!! *and I passed! Yay*

On a totally different note, my lecturer and final year project supervisor Mr Ian Towle was here in KL a few days ago. We have been corresponding via e-mail for some time and I decided to organize a meeting for him with a group of friends at Bangsar. I met him at IMU after work and I brought him to have banana leaf rice at Restoran Sri Nirvana Maju with 7 others. I was glad he enjoyed Indian food very much, in fact he mentioned that he loved Malaysian food so much that he had used his phone to take photos of them to show his students back in Glasgow.

I forget to mention that I finally went balik kampung to Penang for a week in early October. It was nothing but eating and sleeping there. So I decided to reboot my blog to what you see for the last 10-11 posts. Now you know why I made so many posts in October. Not that Penang is a boring place, just that I didn't see a reason to go out other than for food.

I think that's all for the month, hopefully November would be more interesting!!!

lalanandaFRY
4/11/12

How to enjoy Edinburgh with a tight budget #2

After all my friends left Edinburgh shortly after midnight, I was left to wander around Edinburgh on my own. Before I proceed, I must let you know that although I am not exactly a loner, I do enjoy travelling alone much more than in a group. This is mostly for the freedom of doing whatever I want, whenever I want, wherever I want and however I want. I could walk at my comfortable pace, sometimes faster when in a hurry and sometimes strolling when getting tired. I could stop by a coffee shop when I am craving for a cup of java. I could also run and scream crazily in the center of the empty Princes Street on New Years night without worrying that anyone would find out... until now.

Now the world knows about my secret outburst of joy

BORING?
Solo adventures do take a toll on me in that it can be very boring at times, my solution to that is to bring along a massive playlist of music. My Kpop craze in my earbuds continued from Italy to Edinburgh and to most of the places I traveled on my own. I guess I've got to thank music for keeping my sanity intact as well as making a visit more like an adventure in a good movie with a good soundtrack pouring straight into my ear.

My music was put on party shuffle loop for most of the time.

FOOD
My budget tip for food may disgust some of you, not that it is unsanitary or illegal, but it goes against the "go forth and spend" attitude of most tourists. The hostel I was staying in has a fully furnished, comprehensive and beautiful kitchen. I noticed that many guests in the hostel were not aware of this gem because they were all roaming at the hostel's cafe for convenient but overpriced meals. On the day I arrived, I made a short trip to Tesco just around the corner to get some simple frozen foods, pastries and drinks to last the whole stay. So every morning I could just walk to the kitchen, toast my croissants and pies, make a large mug of hot chocolate, and voila! Perfect breakfast that costs only ~50p. Compare that to the hefty £4 breakfast set for 5 items at a buffet breakfast, I rest my case. (How is a tiny bowl of cereal in milk counted as 2 items? Everyone complained about that ripoff!)

only £0.45

On the contrary, I did not hold back on lunch though. My lunch was as most tourists would call it, basic Scottish delicacy. Then dinner was back to the budget style again. Believe or not, my dinner that night only cost £1 even with prawns, wontons and vegetable spring roles, not forgetting a 2L bottle of cola.

the 26 piece set had a crazy 80% discount, so you never know when supermarkets get crazy with their promos.

PICTURES
If you noticed, almost all my tour photos in this blog are from my camera, taken by me or some helpful passerby. The major problem with solo trips is that there is nobody else to take pictures other than the owner, unless the owner hand the camera to a passerby to take a picture of him/her. Edinburgh is a panoramic city and I did not want to be left out of those terrific views, so once in a while I do get help from other tourists to take a picture or two of me. I personally like to approach tourists with huge cameras and who, I hope, are proficient enough to take a decent shot. However when help is unavailable, my amature camwhore techniques could come in handy too. On several occasions, I were also able to place my camera on road signs and rubbish bins to take my picture. Now all these are making me sound pathetic...

Framing is probably my biggest enemy!

SIGHTSEEING?
For a budget solo trip, I need to be fully aware of the location, directions and information. There is no tour guide to bring me around, nobody to tell me stories about the place and no professional planner to arrange where to go and when. Edinburgh is not a particularly good example for this since it was not my first time there. I will elaborate in more detail in my London post. There are many tourist sites in Edinburgh worth visiting to me. So planning the time to visit each site can be tricky especially getting a view of sunrise or attending a specific event. An example of this is my walk up Carlton Hill. On the my last day in Edinburgh, I chose to wake up early to catch a view of sunrise from the top of Carlton Hill. I initially planned it on New Years day but found out that the authorities were still clearing up the fireworks debris, so I delayed it by a day.

the view was fantastic!!!

My worst fear that day was that the roads and pavements were all frosty and slippery. The night before was extremely cold and early morning was still chilly -2°C. Thankfully it did not snow or rain. The key is to prepare suitable clothing and footwear for the weather and keep your fingers crossed.

The only time I wore 3 layers and was still shivering.

I also visited the Edinburgh castle at night, what an experience to see the majestically lit castle up close. On New Years day, I found out that there were a few events going on around the city and I chose to visit the event held in the National Museum of Scotland. This event was similar to a telematch in a family day. I was more interested in the museum since it was my first time visiting it.

No obstruction, perfect view...

The roof is a must-go, the view in the evening is beautiful.

I think I covered the gist of how I travel comfortably without spending much. The next #WalkALOT will be London!!!

lalanandaFRY

4/11/12

How to enjoy Edinburgh with a tight budget #1

I would have been to Edinburgh 5 times by now. My first visit was also my first time planning a trip for a group. We were there solely to attend the annual Edinburgh Tattoo and Fringe festival. But I will not be elaborating about that trip, instead the post will be about my second trip when I traveled on my first solo trip. I mentioned about this before in my Uni-7,8-disaster post that I visited Edinburgh to celebrate the New Year 2012. My definition of a tight budget is roughly £75 pounds for a 3 days 2 nights trip including food, lodging, transport and entrance fees.

The first shot I made in this trip.

My previous visit to Edinburgh and my familiarity of the Edinburgh from Google Map was key in this trip since I decided from the start that I didn't want to travel with the restrains of a physical map. I started my journey by Citylink bus from Glasgow which only costs £0.80 for super single + student price, so the return fair was only £1.60. The bus only took slightly over an hour to reach Edinburgh bus station near St Andrews Square.

Holyrood Palace, the Queen's official residence in Scotland.

Edinburgh is a big city with a very dense and small nucleus, so travelling between tourist sites would be much easier and enjoyable by foot instead of public transportation. I arrived at the bus station at 10am. Since I was traveling very light, I took a slow and comfortable walk along the Royal Mile towards Holyrood Palace and Arthur's Seat. As the icy pavements and grass were melting, I started my hike up Arthur's Seat. The climb up was not too difficult, most of the walking paths are gentle. The hindrance was the powerful wind close to the peak. If you want to climb up Arthur's Seat during winter, bring along gloves, a good windbreaker and of course a nice camera. The view from the top is spectacular, I was fortunate enough to get an clear view of the whole city although it was foggy earlier in the morning.

Did I mention it was beautiful up there?

After carefully climbing down some slippery slopes, I had checked-in and had lunch at the Smart City Hostel which was a fantastic hostel. I stayed at this hostel during the previous trip and was very impressed by the cleanliness and location, not to mention that it only cost around £40 for 2 nights even during the New Year holiday. The hostel was noticeably crowded and many customers were denied rooms without prior booking. Thankfully I managed to get a comfortable bed in decent dorm sharing with 4 other tourists despite paying for a shared 8 bed dorm. So the tip here is to book early, sometimes they may even reward early birds with an upgrade.

My dorm had individual lockers and an attached bathroom and toilet.

I met up with a group of friends who arrived by train at Waverley Station later in the afternoon and had an early dinner at the station's Burger King. Shortly after dinner, we entered the barrier of the Hogmanay Street Party with our £15 basic ticket. Here are my two cents about the Street Party:

• Bring an umbrella or a raincoat in case it rains.
• Glass bottles are not permitted in the party.
• Prices of food and drinks in the party compound are inflated (obviously).
• Be prepared to queue for/use stinky mobile toilets.
• Try not to get separated from the group in the crowd (it is easier said than done).
• Beware of snatch thieves and drunkers.
• Get a comfortable spot near Princes Street Garden at 11.30pm for a wonderful view of the fireworks.
• Enjoy singing Auld Land Syne with everyone on the street.

 

To be honest, I had the feeling that the Hogmanay Street Party was a huge tourist trap when the streets are filled with mostly foreign tourists like me. I was also not particularly impressed by any of those mediocre bands and the whole party was just a hype for the midnight fireworks and Edinburgh being the origin of the world famous Auld Lang Syne song. But I must say the fireworks were impressive and the atmosphere when everyone sang the song was great.

To be Continued...

lalanandaFRY
29/10/12

K for Konfession

Obviously this post is about South Korea, I mean it is so obvious that konfession starts with a K! OK, that was too lame. Maybe I should have named this post Gangnam Style instead. As far as worldwide popularity, Gangnam Style is probably the first thing people associate with South Korea, overtaking stuff like Samsung, Kimchi, football star Park Ji Sung, Taekwondo, UN S-G Ban Ki-Moon and Super Junior. Who could deny the popularity of this song nowadays?

To the US or the rest of the world, English music tend to be the staple or at least the most heard. But in between them lies the sleeping giant of "foreign" music. If you have been living under the shell all these years, here is a list of non-English songs that suddenly became popular (as far as I know):

- La Bamba by Los Lobos (Mexico)

- Rico Suave by Gerardo (Ecuador)

- Macarena by Los del Rio (Spain)

- La Copa de la Vida by Ricky Martin (Puerto Rico)

- The Ketchup Song (Aserejé) by Las Ketchup (Spain)

- Dragostea din tei (Numa Numa Song) by O-Zone (Moldova)

- Jai Ho by A.R.Rahman (Hindi)

Then there was Gangnam Style...

If only Maroon 5 wasn't there...

I am personally a K-fan. Funny that people boast about watching Gangnam Style when the views were at <10,000 while I first watched it after hearing that Korea's National MC Yoo Jae Suk was in it when the views were at ~500. Who would have knew that song would be the most successful viral song so far? Until the second quarter of 2011, I had only known little bits about this country, namely Dae Jang Geum, the UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon and my friend's dance group covering Super Junior's Sorry Sorry. Then a bunch of friends on Facebook posted videos of Kara's Lupin, that was the one thing that got me interested in South Korea.

The rhythm was so catchy that I was listening to it for hours non-stop.

Over the 3 boring months I sat at home rotting my life away waiting to go to Glasgow, there were only 4 things keeping me motivated. Two of which were American sitcoms, the other old Hollywood movies and the last was South Korean TV show called Heroes. Although it was like most other TV shows with a slightly reality setting, this show taught me so much more than I could have read online about current Korean culture. One example is that Koreans have very specific terms when it comes to "referrals" especially when referring to elders as a sign of respect. So when talking, a man should add the word hyung or noona behind a name when referring to another older man or woman respectively. Similarly, a woman should add the word oppa or unni behind when referring to another older man or woman respectively. Therefore "Oppa Gangnam Style" is Psy telling a younger girl that he has Gangnam style, which means he is wealthy and has a high profile symbolized by Gangnam, a district similar to Beverly Hills in California.

When I was in Glasgow, I was introduced to one of the most popular shows in Korea called Running Man by my friend Jason, who used to watch it while having brunch during the weekends. This show is hosted by the aforementioned National MC Yoo Jae Suk and is one of the most popular variety shows in Korea and now gaining popularity across Asia. At one point they actually got Jackie Chan as a cameo appearance in their Hong Kong special episode. Other variety shows like Invincible Youth, We Got Married, Infinity Challenge and Strong Heart are also very interesting if you are interested in Korean life and celebrities. Besides variety shows, I also watched action dramas like Iris and City Hunter, both somehow illustrate the high production value and quality of basic small screen productions in Korea.

I am still hoping for them to come visit Malaysia.

Kpop is another huge thing nowadays. A few years before I have even heard of Kpop, I was watching 綜藝大國民 and they introduced a girl group named Orange Caramel, a subgroup of After School. That time I marveled the Taiwanese fans who turned up to cheer for the group singing songs they don't comprehend. Then years passed, Nobody by Wonder Girls was the most catchy song of that time and now we have Gangnam Style. I finally get how to enjoy Kpop, even my MP3 playlist is mostly Kpop. There is just something interesting about not understanding what the song is about but still enjoying the beat and suddenly language is not a barrier anymore, that is music.That is why Gangnam Style is this successful.

MC Yoo should have worn a green suit instead of yellow!

That's my Konfession, as a K-fan.

공랜이
27/10/12

H&N Prelude

If you have visited my blog before, you would have noticed that the blog has undergone a huge overhaul.

This was how it was, what do you think about the new appearance?

What you may already noticed is that my blog used to be very dark, very grey and very black. I explained in several previous posts that I love the colours black and white because those are the colours that I definitely can see *I'm red-brown-green colourblind*. The new colourful appearance is my way of showing that I am going to embrace a colourful change in my life. This is probably my first post about me NOW... what I mean is this is not a retrospect anymore! I am naming this new thread of posts as H&N a.k.a Hear and Now. Previous threads can be accessed easily by clicking on the icons on the right.

Ironically, the H&N sign is black and white... lol

Since this is prelude, let me introduce this blog and new thread to all of you again. GLOCCOVNAA started out as a pseudo-blog on the social networking site Friendster in early 2007 *when it was the fashionable thing to have*. At that time it was just called 'Entry to Hell' and was the platform I used to post my rants about my life and stress when I was in high school (Entry to Hell is now one of my threads on this site). When I transferred all of that into blogger later that year, I renamed it as 'Great World of Mystery, Suspense or Virtually Nothing at all' and started a new thread called 'Mystery of the Unknown'. I think you will see how bad a poet I was/am/ever will be. That explains why my blog has such a long name even after I renamed my blog as 'Great Life of Conflict, Climax or Virtually Nothing at all', now known as GLOCCOVNAA.

I had this header for almost 3 years, the one before had a white horse instead of the chess set.

I entered college the following year and started another thread called 'Musclés Dé Dansé' which is French for dancing muscles to document my college life. The weird part about these posts were that 8 of them had French titles and the rest had English titles. To be honest, I have no idea why I made it that way, it seems silly now looking at it years later. The longest and probably my favourite is the Uni-disaster thread. The numbers between Uni and disaster shows the semester when the post was published. It lasted the whole four years of my university life with weekly posts much like a university log book.

I made new little icons for my threads, cute right?

As I mentioned before, I still have lots interesting stuff to post regarding my travels while I was in the UK and Europe during the past year. I may start another thread to post about that and in the mean time, H&N will be the ongoing thread. My previous post 'Remakesploitation' and many other similar posts are special spontaneous posts which are more like articles I write when I did some reading and study on certain topics. These can be very random *I have talked about Japanese trends of making big stuff and celebrity shout-outs*. Recently I gave it a new name "Really Random Rants" a.k.a the 3Rs.

If you managed to read through this whole post about my *blog history* and felt it was boring, just scroll down and you will see that I am not as boring as you think... I hope! Thank you very much for visiting my blog and I hope you will come visit again to find more interesting posts. By the way, do visit my youtube channel as well! The link is down the right column.

This is lalanandaFRY signing out!
25/10/12