12 more days

Aw Chia!

Your posts made me smile! I had a great time walking with you at Kings Park last week.

While the rest of Perth was busy working, we chatted and enjoyed the vibrant colours of the wild flowers in the warm spring sun!








I still can't believe that Kev and I will be leaving soon. We have semi packed and are now ensuring we have everything we need for the next 6 months - travel undies, cameras, chargers, clothes for summer and clothes for a very cold winter.

I'm waiting on things to come in the mail too such as a rashie vest for the Maldives and a lifeproof iPhone case which is water, sand and snow proof. I hope they arrive before we leave.

My mind has become focused on the trip now, and so with the acting thing, I've stopped auditioning for roles. However, I still have one more speaking role to film on this coming Monday. It's for an ECU short film. I play a nursing student :) so I'm also going to have to learn the lines for that.

Last Saturday I had my first speaking role. It was pretty cool and pretty exciting. I was a little nervous because usually as an extra the camera sees you but isn't focused on you. So admittedly the first few moments were a little intimidating. However, I enjoyed every moment of it. I spoke to the director about my lines, and he said that he wanted to change them. After discussing what he wanted, the change made sense and so after that I had to really try to change my mindset as I had prepared the role with a different 'reaction' in mind.

I had 3 or 4 takes before the director got what he wanted. I wasn't used to that. I automatically started telling myself off in my head for having to have more than 1 take. But after my last take, the director said I was really good, so after hearing that I had to start telling myself to let it go and just be happy with what I had done.

So with that role and the role on Monday completed, I'll have a few speaking parts under my belt before I leave. I will have extra roles and a voice over role too. Hopefully this will give me something to show for if I have the chance to audition for something during my travels :)

When will I?

Evening Anna!

The pictures that we took over the weekend make me smile. I'm going to miss you so much when you're gone. I wonder, when will be the next time I have brunch with you? Or go for a walk or a d & m in Kings Park?

So much has happened the last month I haven't had time to reflect. It's scary because suddenly it all comes to a screeching halt and what you thought you had in mind isn't the case anymore. And here I am thinking of a plan.

And here I am lying in bed. Telling you that I'll miss you. And then I'm going to read this book that a friend recommended. Philosophy! Who would've thought?

Cake to decorate

I spent too much time with this cake. Took more time decorating it than baking it! My house mate thought I was mad. Standing in the kitchen, spatula in hand, rotating the cake around and around and repositioning the chocolate shards (which I tried to make but ended in a mess). Then removing them and eventually settling for strawberries instead. It's a chocolate and coffee cake and usually I can't stand decorations that don't compliment the flavour of the cake but in this case the strawberries really needed to be there to add colour.

I brought it to school and the ladies seemed to love it. Phew! I did have SaraLee apple Danish and ice cream as the back up plan. That's the problem with baking a whole cake, you can't taste it without obvious chunks missing.

In case you miss me, I've thrown in a pic of yours truly. It's been difficult getting out of bed and soldiering on when it's cold. This was me on a good morning to work. So glad it's heading towards longer days and Spring!

It's not long until you embark on your adventure of a life time! I'm so envious. I wish I could do something similar. That wanderlust feeling has slowly crept back. When the day isn't so crazy, I often find myself daydreaming about random places I've been and wishing I could be back there again. I know I'll miss you but I'm counting on updates here ;)

Have a lovely weekend :)

Wheels in motion

Hi Chia!

It's been a while for both of us. But I am so happy to see you back blogging!

Your big breakfast looks amazingly delicious! Today it has been raining non stop and the dampness has chilled me down to the bone. My toes are clammy and cold as we speak! So your breakfast looks so good right now (at 3.20pm!).

I've had a quick look over the last few posts and realised that there as been a lot that has happened on my side which I haven't written about.

Firstly, I've kick started in the direction of...this is so random - acting!

It's always been something that has been making appearances in my journals since high school. Once in a while, there would be some entry saying 'I know this sound so silly and so irresponsible, but I dream of getting into the character of someone else and act.' After realising this, I decided that since I had all this free time and I was going to make an effort to be kind to myself, I decided to give 'the foolish dream' a go. It has been a fast, fun and exciting period of my life. I was so surprised that the people that I've met along the way were exactly like me! And the more and more I chat to them and others in the industry, the more I realised that I had always felt like an outsider in the legal field.

If you wanna check out my progress in the acting thing, I've set up an acting page on Facebook, as recommended to me by an actor. You can find it here.

Secondly, and this one is a biggie. I don't think I've mentioned it on here yet, but Kev and I are soon leaving on a six months trip away! We bought one way tickets to Male in the Maldives and we jet set on 30 September 2013!

The big trip was also something I've been writing about to myself in my journals since early university days - just after my first trip to Europe in early 2005. I dreamed about doing it after uni. The plan was to go travelling before getting articles in a law firm. However, that didn't happen. I was offered the opportunity to do my articles at a national insurance law firm, and as such, I put my dreams on hold.

And when the money came in, and life threw me a spanner in the works with relationships breaking down, finding my birth family, starting a new relationship, making new friends and settling into the routine of a young professional, I found that I started losing control of my life. I was a slave to the schedule, to the parties, to the group trips being organised etc. Eventually, after becoming more and more discontent with my life, I started to pull myself out of the fast lane, and tried to focus my goal.  For a while, I wasn't even sure about my goal. I was being torn between getting a house, or going on that trip I've been dreaming about.

I then came to a realisation that would change my direction, and shock Kev. It meant so much to me that I wrote it down, as a promise to myself:

I told Kev this, and at first he was shocked and then sad. He said he would miss me. I was scared about telling him about this, but I knew I had to or I'd be unhappy for the rest of my life; regretting that I never did it; angry at the world for the mistake that I made. He supported my dream, and then after a few months of telling him what I planned on doing, Kev then asked me 'Can I come too?'.

And there we have it. I like to think that I would have still gone ahead and planned the trip. But to be honest, I think it is an accumulation of the dream, Kev's support and the quick decline in my job satisfaction at my workplace, that has made this possible. In between the day that I made the promise to myself till today, there were definitely times where I was very close to almost letting the dream go. Having Kev there was like having a running buddy. Someone to help keep you on track. It also made things more exciting for the both of us. We both started to share the anticipation and the planning.

In the next few days, I'll try an blog more about our plans! :)

Hope to hear from you soon!!!! 

Big breakfasts

Hi Anna!

It's been a while but I'm working my way back to the blogging world.

Here's the crazy big breakfasts I've been having over the weekend. I ate way too many mushrooms. If you come down here again this is what you'll be in for.


Hope you had a great weekend xxx

Finish This Book (FTB)

Heya Chia!

Happy birthday for yesterday!

I am so glad you liked your present! I love the dinosaur! I had looked around my place to find something that I could put in there, but had nothing. I even considered getting you a kinder surprise in hopes that when you open it, something cool would be in there, small enough to fit in your terrarium.  The T-Rex definitely fits! It looks like it's raging and hunting for food!

Me, I've been chilling at home and working on my creativity. As you would know, one of the presents I got you was a copy of the mysterious and intriguing book called "Finish This Book" by Keri Smith. I too have a copy, and have started my missions.  For all those who are wondering what the hell I am talking about, here are some snaps of the book:

Finish This Book is one that invokes imagination and creativity through exploring!
I knew that you and I would love it!

One of the preliminary activities

Definition of a sleuth, trusty Google!

 I completed the above yesterday while chatting on the phone to you... Tee hee! Nothing like colouring in while having a good chat about life!

Today I was feeling a bit tired, and so I kept a low profile. I stayed indoors, drank my hot water, snacked on a few choc chip cookies and then started looking up Moleskine notebooks because I had just finished the one that I was using.

And as you would normally do when Googling up things, I came across this video where a guy draws in his pocket Moleskin daily; and WOW - he is amazing.

After that, when I came across the warm up exercise in Finish This Book (lets call it FTB from now on yea?) I had the drawing style of Maykel Nunes in my head and I just stared out in front of me. Eventually, my new bamboo plant came into focus, and inspiration grew:

My lucky bamboo 

I now can't imagine how this page looked when it was empty.

My aim was to follow the instructions and fill the empty page with something interesting while trying something new.  I also wanted to be daring and draw outside of the designated lines. OOOH... risk taker! Haha, it may seem petty, but psychologically, for ages I just could not do that. I had to keep within the lines.

Thank you Maykel Nunes for your inspiration! I never knew I could draw something like this, free hand with no pencil work beforehand! Though it's a rookie start, I quite like it

Turning 28!

Look what I got for my birthday :D

Hehe. I found TRex amongst the boxes of 'junk' I've been collecting for school.

I can't wait to show it off to the kids.