As we all know and are excited about, the Malaysia’s First Charity Online Fashion Entrepreneurs’ Weekend is happening now! Like, over this weekend, now.

A couple of my friends, Soon Seng and Jan, told me about this months ago and invited me to join their initial meetings to see if I could help out in anyway but unfortunately I was up to my neck with final exams and patients and clinics so I had to sit this one out. But I am so very glad to see that they have created this monster of a blog shop bazaar!! Good job you guys! And your whole team as well!

With a few clever social media marketing strategies (mainly facebook), the MOFEW facebook page has managed to garner like 10,000 fans!! Very very clever. I am very impressed.

Months ago I thought I would not have time to set up a booth but when I knew I could, it was already too late. Spots were snapped up like hot cakes!

So I went there as a shopaholic. Mojo not there though, but I trudged on.

Having a little fun with the camera while waiting for our sushi. Some noms before blowing our wallets. If any of you are wondering, yes, there are real lens on these glasses. These are my casual glasses.

My little Shevie looking so sexy.. sigh. Can still remember the time when she was 2 years old and throwing her ball which was made of cloth at me and me throwing it back to her. They grow up so fast these days. I bet she’s hating me for cooing like that.

Soon Seng grew up so fast too wtf. Can remember him as the Interact president who politely shook my hand and engaged me in a very interactive and friendly conversation, surpassing his 16 years of age. Soon Seng took the day off to tend to his pet project and he was running around all business like with the suit on and all! Good job Soon Seng!

MOFEW! So there were about 100 booths there, apparently lah. But if didn’t feel like it. Maybe because it was well spaced out but who was counting anyway, I was shopping! More like..er.. booth shopping. Can you believe I only came out of it with like a passport holder (nice passport holder okay! Snakeskin!), a bag organizer and a looong bag hanger! So not me. But my bank account is also not in its usual state now that my mother says I don’t need money to pay rent, electricity, my own meals and even petrol. Sigh. Han han yong. Oh yeah, I’m back in Subang now for those of you who don’t know me/have me on Facebook. I’m done with AIMST. I have graduated..yup… there should be a post about it……………there must be a post about it. *stands firm!*

Ahhh okay now we start looking at THINGS. Don’t you love the bags? I love Lush Serendipity’s newest collection of bags. All in patent candy! Yarghh!! She gave me a nice discount…(very nice of you, Grace!!) but as I just survived a big shopping trip recently, I had to decline. Her bags are just as beautiful as the new stocks I have seen around Sg. Wang, maybe nicer even! And cheaper than Sg. Wang too! Go go go!

I won’t be linking blogshops now, because it’s like..4am? So just head on over to the MOFEW website to look at the list of exhibitors!

Some gorgeous red shoes that Mun Teng was lusting after.

How can you get enough of the pretty bags?!?!

I can just look at these pictures all day and be happy and satisfied for the rest of..the.. er.. week. Till the next shopping trip!

Grace and her mum who always helps her whenever she has a stall at any bazaar!

So cute right the umbrella! Brenda, they remind me of you!

More deco the blogshops did for their booths. I think a good business plan would be to set up a service that conceptualizes a blogshop’s layout at a bazaar and then implement it for them. NAIS. I patent this idea first.

Can hang your bags high high also..

More candy coloured bags!!! It’s seriously the trend now lah I think. See it around a lot. I first saw it in Singapore and almost bought one. Luckily I managed to control myself!

Zoomed in! Sorry, couldn’t resist.

I like the tree concept! I noticed a lot of blog shops brought their own little lamps.

More shoes!

Eyelashes and clothes..

Some accessories!

Big, chunky accessories! Not my type though.

So sweet!! I like the idea of hanging it like that and with a chalkboard as the backdrop!

If you like the designs, remember to check out Rose Handmade.

Yunique Paradise is synonymous with gorgeous, gorgeous, shoes. The only thing that has ever held me back from purchasing a pair is 1) the killer 4-5 inches heels 2) the price is out of my budget.. but if the lot of you can justify spending more than normal on a pair of gorgeous gorgeous shoes..then Yunique Paradise, you must must pay her site a visit. The designs are just like the name of the shop, unique. Very very unique. Oh yeah and Yuni, the owner, is all the way from Penang. I have bought leggings from the blogshop before as well!

Love how the spotlight shines. Makes everything look so professional. I don’t think any bazaar has ever had booths like that! In a way I still prefer the old layout of bazaars where everything is at hips level or shoulders level at most. But if you are talking about spacing, MOFEW did a pretty good job with that. And don’t worry, you can’t sweat there at all. No one is pushing elbows to elbows. You can stop anywhere you want to try on shoes, browse items without worrying if you’re blocking traffic.

Love accessories..<3

Almost all the blogshops have mannequins these days.

Ahhh so cute!!! I like!~ Shevie and I were browsing blogshops yesterday afternoon (in preparation for MOFEW wtf) and she was telling me that this Quirky Brown Cow is one of her favourite blogshops!

I bought my gorgeous snake skin passport holder from this girl. She’s really sweet and friendly! And sweetly shy too hahaha..:) But with gorgeous things! I wish she had more designs though. I think she has some laptop bags too!

At least I am pretty sure there were no one else at the bazaar who were selling passport holders or laptop bags even! I got my passport holder at RM24. Okay lah, can lah.

No, they are not Jibbitz but they are made of the same material as the Jibbitz! Hair clips in the cutest colours! Would get some if I wore them.

Enamel earrings which I have seen in Bangkok. Loveee it still!

Don’t mess with this mannequin! Soak Republic always puts so much effort into their booth layout!

Here’s Mei who has her own blogshop yet helped out with Soak Republic’s booth as well. That’s Jeremy from myfavouritees!

Soak Republic is very very popular. I hear that the owners Tiffany and Pei Shan are even doing it full time now! Congratulations to the both of them! Nice name you got there, Pei Shan. I think I’ve told you that before.

Quirky rings is love!

There’s a shop which had like dinner dresses. Was about RM80-RM100++ per piece.

If there was a competition for prettiest booth layout, I think Rara Black probably stand a chance at bagging the grand prize.

Bird cages are a very popular decoration for booths at bazaars.

Ahhhh hairband. I wanted to get some but forgot. Damn damn damn!

You can never have too many accessories.

Look at those lovely numbers.

Even lovelier numbers!!<3

Didn’t really stay long to understand the concept of the necklace…which is apparently convertible. Oh well, if you do drop by, check it out.

AHHh!! Been so long since I saw these at bazaars. They brighten up any bazaar! Or maybe there’s a slight nostalgia to these pixels as they were quite a hit at the very first bazaar I attended.

Too cute!

Ahhhh more enamel earrings.

Gorgeous bib necklaces!

This girl was selling Bumpits! Been meaning to try some but I ended up with this contraption that can help keep my hair in a tight bun! Which is something I needed as well, so got that instead.

This guy was really really good at selling the bag organizers. I was just walking along and suddenly he comes up to me and says, “You look like a girl who would use a bag organizer!” LOL I couldn’t stop laughing because it was quite cheesy, like those 50s cars salesman kinda thing, but at the same time it was hard to say no. So that’s the story of how I ended up with a bag organizer.

And his bevy of female friends at the booth also convinced me to get a bags hanger. So I now have a bags hanger that can hold about 8 bags? I’d take a photo of it but I am too lazy now. It’s like a long belt with buttons and stuff to hold all your bags in a vertical fashion. The girls there told me that the bag hanger should be able to last five years! Promise ah!!

They were like choosing the colours for me based on my spectacles. “You sure like pink one!”

They weren’t the only ones. Every shop I went, girls were like, “How about this pink one?” Ahhh..the glasses are saying too much!

Dropping by Jeremy’s store! My Favourite Tees is doing quite well as Jeremy is really popular!

Jeremy’s shirts.

More of his shirts!

Some heels caught my eyes. Love the way they make the shoe hangers.

More bags, but these were slightly more normal than the amazing patent candy bags!

I like the embellishments on this one though!

Here is Sze May, who was from my school, who was taking care of her friend’s stall while her friend was at work! Shevie bought a skirt from her so while waiting for her to get back from the toilet, Sze May and I caught up!

Managed to grab Jeremy for a picture.

Mun Teng trying on cuteee clothes at Ugly Ducking Closet. If you like ribbons, pastels and the sweetest things, this shop has it!

Some very unique looking stuff!

Ahh so sweet!

I like the mannequin more than the dress. Eh wait, it’s a playsuit! Nicer!

Mun Teng actually found a shop selling black bling glasses. You can’t see it here, but it catches the light at certain angles, like any other self respecting blinged up glasses. Sisterhood of the bling bling glasses! <3

Made the both of them take this lovely photo together!

A nicer photo of myself and Soon Seng.

Mun Teng in the midst of shopping.

Monster bags!

Shevie’s favourite shop – some charms bracelet shop.

More bird cage decoration!

Soon Seng took to the microphone to garner some attention from the oblivious shoppers, announcing Digi’s talk which was happening outside.

Bumped into Kimra!! My junior from uni!!

A blurry photo with Jan, who is the main organizer. The bazaar was his brainchild.

Mun Teng sayangs her new bag until very geram.

She loves her new bling bling glasses too.

I test drive and see. Okay, pass.

Mun Teng’s beard of whimsical painted top.

Polka dots apparently make her happy.

Some black shirt.

A Michael Jackson inspired jacket (you should have seen the buttons).

Something we found in the goodie bag.

Would make for good props for those auction days that colleges have.

With my dear Shevie, after she was done making her bracelet. I didn’t know my little cousin sister loved charm bracelets so much!

Another interesting layout.

Bowing to Shevie’s every whim and fancy.

What a huge selection to choose from!

I like the rose themed things!

My snakeskin passport holder.

TA-DAH!

Shev’s bracelet. Nice right!

She bought two. Head on over to her blog. She’ll probably blog about her spoils sooner or later.

So glad that my cousin is bonding with one of my besties.

Overall, I had a wonderful time browsing through the booths, enjoying the ample space and meeting familiar faces. MOFEW  opens at 11am to 9pm on Saturday but closes at 7pm on Sunday! So hurry up before the goodies sell out!  I had fun sharing the love!

Inside the box was a whole selection of beads you could choose from! The idea is to string it altogether with the chain that comes together and wear it as a funky yet whimsical charm bracelet of sorts!

You’ve seen many other charms, but have you seen a charm bracelet with various charm-like beads to be strung through? These remind me of lanterns by the way.

This is too cute!! A kitten with a whole through its body.

The dangly range would be great for those who still prefer their charm bracelets to swing with every move.

This is one of my favourite charm/bead from the whole box! A rocking horse! Ahh!!

Something more….post-modern?

These ones are nice too. Like what jewelry can escape some blings eh?

She gave me a silver chain for my little project here! Over at her blog, there are plenty more colours and materials to choose from! A pink leather strap caught my eyes.. >__>

After stringing through all the beads!

There is a hook-button-something for you to attach one end of the bracelet to the other. I don’t really know how to explain but when it is your hands, you will have a rough idea how it’ll work.

Since I was alone, I couldn’t ask anyone to do the clasp for me. Oh well, but you get the idea!

Love how the colours go together. Love how there is no set category for this piece of jewelry.

Poor horse!

If you would like to see more of her beads and bracelets, head on over to Colorsbeads! You don’t have to go OTT like me and maybe opt for something sweeter (pink leather strap, NOW!). Enjoy:)

For today’s review, I would like to show you the camera and video taking functions on the Samsung Galaxy S! Aside from that, I would also be taking you through how your photos and videos are shown on the phone. And as usual, you can either see how the functions are in my youtube review videos or just scroll down to look at all the pictures!

The Camera

Part 1 of the camera and video camera review.

Part 2 of the camera and video camera review.

The 5mp camera unfortunately does not come with flash, which is quite a downer for such a phone that has practically everything. Why are gadget makers so cruel!?! Why must they hold back on certain items?! I can’t and won’t buy another phone JUST because that new beautiful phone has a flash on it! I’m not going to fall for that marketing ploy! NEVAR!

Anyway, the maximum resolution is 2592 X 1944 pixels and best of all, the camera has touch screen autofocus. Nais. (insert facebook thumbs up)

The camera comes with Geo-tagging, face and smile detection and even has antishake!

Though the flashless situation is a bit of a downer, you have the option of changing your ISO and also the exposure which is quite unheard of for a camera phone. And no, there is no option to change the shutter speed you greedy bastard.

There’s a few shooting modes that you can use.

The self shot utilizes the front facing camera and takes really crap photos, with a maximum of 0.3mp, but good for sending that good morning photo to your boyfriend or girlfriend.

Beauty mode gives off a gaussian blur, makes the average girl (read: me) glow sweetly. I think I have mentioned this feature in a previous post.

The smile shot utilizes the smile detection technology. Works like a charm. Will show you more further down the post!

Continuous mode is your burst function, great for freezing those droplets of water. (but make sure your lighting is like sunlight or else you can’t get anything under lowlights)

Panorama…I thought it sucked while preparing the videos and photos for this post. But I took it out to town today when I had to go bang tables at the TNB headquarters for charging me RM500 for this month’s bill and… lo and behold! It takes really nice 180 degrees panorama shots! Shall upload the picture in the next review!

Oh vintage. *jizzes in pants* I love the vintage mode SO, so, so, so, much. It takes in four different modes: neutral (normal colour), warm (orangey colour), cool (bluish-greenish colour) and mono (black and white). All photos have a vignette effect to it. I’m pretty sure you’d be familiar with the vignette effect if you have been following my last few posts.

Add Me is ugly and pointless. Just randomly shoots one photo, and then you point and shoot another. It adds it together. I tried a few of myself kissing myself..etc.. but the effect is quite bleh. So you can skip that, no problem.

Action shot, I have yet to try that one out. But the maximum resolution is quite low, so skip that too.

Cartoon is quite cute! You can change almost everything to vector art! I have a bit of a cartoon mode demonstration in the video, so please layan and watch it too!

Here’s the smile detection technology I mentioned in the smile shot mode. I got a photo of myself and Chee Kiang at the Nuffnang blog awards and our smiles were actually detected! Damn cool right?!?

You then have scene modes.. which is like different hues… lightings…*insert camera jibberish*

More of the scene modes.

The last two. I have yet to try these out. IMHO, even in your normal Point-n-Shoot cameras, these scenes don’t do much for your photos. I just take everything in auto or manual mode.

Some settings that you can find within the camera application.

A little tip though. You may want to download some camera applications from the Android Market like the RetroCamera or FXCamera or something like that which is riding on the LOMO cam trend but it crashed my main camera a few times. I had to restart it a few times. So I think I am better off without those cool effects. Even if the effects are cool, the resolution is super poor. So…. yeah. Don’t bother.

The Video Camera

As we all know, and love, about the Samsung Galaxy S, is that it takes video in HIGH DEFINITION!

My damn tv doesn’t even have it yet, but my handphone already has it? Wtf?!

The video camera interface.

But it’s true. You can shoot videos in high definition (720p) and alternatively shoot in plain ol’ VGA mode which is great for your MMS videos.

But I can’t stand videos taken in VGA mode, i mean like why want to take any VIDEO at all with that kind of quality? I am always so annoyed when someone sends me some scandalous sex video and they are always, always, ALWAYS, shot in VGA mode. Can’t see nuts leh. Literally. It’s like rod…..then pixel. Like wtf!

So high definition is the way to go if you want the world to see everything.

But I am not advocating THAT okay, by everything I mean how green the grass are in the videos, how happy my boyfriend looked on his graduation day, how cute a little child is blowing bubbles from a bubble gun along Gurney Drive and all the sweet and innocent things in this world. *throws flowers and cotton candies everywhere*

La Galleria

Part 1 of viewing your media.

Part 2 of viewing your media. (this is actually a video clip of Glee’s Cover on Bad Romance..:D)

Part 3 of viewing your media.

All images saved in your phone can be found in the ‘gallery’ application. No matter where you save your photos on your sd card, it will be scavenged by some strange mechanism in the phone and be placed in the gallery for you.

Be it photos that you took with your camera, photos transferred from other devices via bluetooth (where can I get a bluetooth digital camera?! I long for the day~), print screens from your applications, photos saved from your computer..oh the list is endless.

A cool effect you can do with the gallery is that the albums tilt this way and that way when you move your phone about. I suppose the accelerometer is responsible for this.

You’ll see this when you click on the photo album. Oh, you can even see videos, yeah I forgot to mention that. By clicking on any individual picture, you’ll have the option to immediately upload it to any social media network you want, email it to anybody you want… I have mentioned all this in the previous post.

The Video Player

Now, the video player is a serious WIN on the Samsung Galaxy S.

The interface could be better lah.

But when the quality is nothing short of stunning, everything else just falls into place. This proved to be a good procrastination tool during my study week. *guilty*

Next, we have youtube! Compared to the youtube application on my Sony Ericsson Satio, this youtube application wins hands down because you have the option of playing it in high quality! After opting for high quality, videos are really nice and clear!

The interface is sleek.

Say hello to Nigahiga in low quality!

So much more handsome in high quality right?

Another way to watch video is via your browser.

So, you can only watch Xiaxue’s videos via the clicknetwork site. Quite mafan to find on youtube, don’t know why. I don’t think it’s on youtube anymore, or is it? I think she’s using vimeo or something like that.

So when you click on a video, this is what you will see.

Clicking on ‘Internet’ will initiate a download. Something like what your Realplayer can do to flv files.

If you click on video player, you can stream the video! Quality looks good, doesn’t it?

Looks a bit blur here, but it’s really clear.

The Music Player

Watch the video first!

Love..love..love..<3 I really like the music player. You know what’s the best part about this whole arrangement?

There’s a slot to insert your microSD and up to 32gb too! So, think about it. How about I slot in like 32gb worth of videos AND songs on top of the 16gbs already built into the phone? Too awesome right!! *squeals*

Didn’t manage to get the album art in. Not sure how. But here’s the list of songs I have on anyway.

*clears throat* Bathroomdiva is my syok sendiri name when I record myself singing my favourite song of the moment on Garageband. Oh right, by flipping the phone to its side, your playlist will look like that. Like a digital jukebox. The records swivel around as you choose a song.

The player interface.

You can change the sound quality too! Wide is really loud!

Some of the other things that you can tweak within the music player.

With the visualisation checked, you can have some of this.

FM Radio

Please watch the video!

The FM Radio, like all your FM radios on your phones would need you to plug your earphones in.

Not much photos, but you can check out the video. It is slightly more detailed. Scans all the available radio channels and lists it out for you. I thought that was pretty cool!

Aldiko eBook Reader

See the Aldiko eBook in action!

I’ve never had an eBook reader so this was rather new to me!

One of the reasons why I was drawn to the iPad was because I could read pdf journals with ease and also read books in a comfortable way, digitally!

You can even see the cover of the book and judge it.

The words are well sized. You can increase the fonts etc etc. About pdfs, you can download the Adobe Reader application and see your pdfs there. Very smooth, hardly laggy at all!

Ahh, we have come to the end of another review post. Sorry lah my blog is a little commercialized these days. Tahan lah k? Will write emo posts about graduating (hopefully. If cannot, will write emo posts about staying back for another year. Touch all the wood around you for me please.)

So here are some photos and videos that I have taken recently with the Samsung Galaxy S. Enjoy!

Some videos first:

A video of Chee Kiang going up to get his scroll!

Getting Chee Kiang and Adeline to say a little something about graduating!

A rusty drain pipe near where I had my dinner a few evenings ago.

I like photographing this kind of weed.

In vignette effect!

Vignette again! <3

Photo of Chee Kiang’s messy apartment.

With his mortar board that he did not quite get the hang of.

Edited this photo with the Android Photoshop Mobile application. Can do quite a lot of things with it!

The view from Chee Kiang’s kitchen.

My darling boy graduated as a pharmacist from NUS! What I did was risky… but it was a very important day and I had to be there even though I had another exam to sit for on Monday. I flew back to Penang (where I parked my car, I love how convenient flying from Penang airport has become) on Sunday and was studying again by 2pm, gearing up for my second last exam.

While walking around the shopping mall near his place, saw these colourful waterbottles. So cute somemore as they are very tiny. For babies I think! This is taken with the ‘beauty mode’. See the soft glow? <3

Chee Kiang’s classy room. *jelez*

If you managed to read up to here, drop a comment lah!

One was when Kel Li was asking about ulcers and after giving her some *cough* expert advice *cough*, that particular question came out for my final exams the following day!!

And another one was when I saw a tweet about a bloggers’ phone review program organized by Maxis. Bloggers/twitter users were invited to send in audition videos to convince the good people at Maxis why they should be chosen to review the latest Android phone to join the Maxis family – THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S! It retails at RM2599 but if you get a contract with Maxis, you save RM900 and only pay RM1699. More details can be found here.

Here’s my audition video:

I was never a huge fan of Samsung. If you’re a tv, you’re a tv. Like for LG, if you’re a refrigerator, you’re a refrigerator. So when they branched out to the mobile phone market, I was a little wary.

But after spending two days with the phone, I just.can’t.seem.to.put.it.down!!!

My mum and brother (who found the office to collect the phone from, on google maps, no less) were kind enough to drive down to Damansara to get the phone for me as I am still stuck in Sungai Petani, trying to wrap up my final exams. I have 10 days in between my theory paper and my ..er.. something like a practical paper, so I pretty much have some time on my hands to explore this gorgeous Android phone thoroughly!

10 participants have been chosen and the review program will last for two weeks, so hopefully I can keep up with Maxis’ expectations and do a good job with the reviews.

The Samsung Galaxy S is packed away in a classy black box, totally befitting of its nature.

The Samsung Galaxy S as you probably know already, is running on the Android platform. The Android platform was created by Google and have been adopted by more recent smartphones. Like the HTC Desire and the Xperia 10 are both running on the android platform.

I’ve only ever used the Sony Ericsson Experia which was running on Windows Mobile (which I can’t stand. It can’t be customized to my liking AT ALL) and when I got my Sony Ericsson Satio, the symbian platform. The symbian platform is mostly associated with Nokia phones, don’t know why Sony so itchy backside go and use symbian. As a result, there were many many many applications that I could not use because it was a Sony and most Symbian apps are made for Nokia.

Using these two platforms only made me hungry for all those lovely applications that my smartphone toting friends have been raving about. “Did you know that you can play Cooking Mama on the iPhone?” “OMG my phone can detect the nearest speedtraps!!” “Let me check-in at this joint first.” Gahhh.. I wanted in on it too.

Enter the Android Market.

The android market is relatively newer than the itunes store but the list of free applications are ENDLESS. Can’t stop scrolling one.

Indirectly camwhoring with the Samsung Galaxy S prior to my unboxing video. I tell you, my unboxing video is super fail. I totally forgot to record the part where I lift the lid of the box up. :\

Unboxing Video FAIL and a short introduction on the Samsung Galaxy S:

The phone settled cozily in its padded packaging.

Inside the box are the usuals – phone charger, earphones, usb cable, battery pack, manuals and warranty forms.

There’s a sticker on the front of the phone bragging about its awesome awesome features!

Camwhoring with the Samsung Galaxy S before turning it on for the first tieme!

This was the moment when I fell in love with the Super AMOLED screen. I finally found the power button and the gorgeous screen came to life.

The photo does the phone no justice as the glow just emanated from the phone, spilling out within that small space in my dark hotel room.

One thing to really really love about the phone is how easily it downloads the internet settings for you upon insertion of the SIM card.

My experiences with my previous two smartphones made the internet settings thingie quite a hassle, to the point that I even fear resetting my phone to factory settings.

After many many research and consideration, I have decided that it would be most cost efficient to have two separate sim cards on two different phones.

I have been using the Maxis Value Plus 80 plan for a couple of years now. Using data on a normal talk plan can be very hefty. Even with the bundled data packages available, I don’t find them to be very cost worthy.

I was ecstatic when I managed to get the Maxis Broadband Package for Rm48! I already had my own USB modem, so I just took the sim card and stuck it in my smart phone. When I am away from my streamyx connection and would love to kill time with my laptop, I’ll just stick the simcard into the USB modem and voila, instant high speed internet! (as I am on broadband)

One thing I have never been sure about is if there are any differences between the speeds of both broadband and normal talk plan data speeds. My Maxis broadband can be faster than my streamyx connection at times.

ANYWAY, back to the Samsung Galaxy S.

When I stuck my maxis broadband SIM card into the phone, the settings just fell into place immediately at the click of a button. No username asked, no passwords, no need to go into the settings etc. They then prompted me to add my google account and after that I was signed in to all my google stuff!!

Here’s the right side of the phone where the power button is located. (couldn’t find it at first)

The back of the phone, with its 5.0mp camera and the speaker. I’ve read some reviews about how they would rather the phone have a more matt finishing than its current plasticky back but I think with it being plastic, scratches will be less. It looks rather promising in the scratch resistant department.

To the left of the phone would be the volume control which doubles as your camera ..er.. zoomer.

At the top of the phone would be the 3.5mm jack and the USB port.

I like the fact that you have to slide the entire screen down to unlock it. Locking the phone is done by pressing once on the power button.

There is a home button (too dark, cannot see, but I assure you, it’s there), a left button to change settings for applications and etc, a right button to go back, back, back.

As I have mentioned in the video, the most awesome technology to come from the Samsung Galaxy S would be the Swype keyboard. The idea is to trace the alphabets of a word that you wanna write, and tada, it appears in your message/tweet/status/email whatever that you’re writing. I’ll do another detail on the Swype function over the next few days!

The best thing about it is that it doesn’t even have to be alphabets specific. More on that later.

Just a sneak peek into one of the apps… I love it that I can customize my MSN! Ahhh! It’s almost as pink as my adium contact list.

Oh, right. Here’s a photo of the phone without the battery cover. There’s a slot to insert a microSD and the phone itself already has an internal storage space of 16gb. So that’s a whole lot to go before cranking up the old lelong.com.my or forum.lowyat.com.

Before I end my introductory post on the Samsung Galaxy S, here are some random photos and HD videos taken with my latest baby (for two weeks though, sigh):

At Kek Lok Si

Along Gurney Drive

My blinged up car keys shimmering under the lights at Kenny Rogers while waiting for Lie Yuen’s flight to touchdown at the Penang Airport.

Just checking out how the camera fares when capturing my laptop screen.

My favourite shot!! The food seem to have an ethereal glow about them.

Told Mun Teng on gTalk that I was at Kek Lok Si and if she wanted me to tell Guan Yin anything, complete with photos and all.

Sorry lah I can’t get over my beautiful car keys.

Yea I know I look quite messy here. I was testing the front-facing camera. Not too bad eh?

With so much noise in the morning though. Yeap, having a smartphone means you don’t have to roll out of bed to check your email, facebook and twitter.

With the normal 5.0mp camera. My exposure was set too low actually, but it would really be nice if there was a flash.

Bwahahhaa… slapped on some make-up before doing the video above. Pai seh, pai seh.

Was looking around my room for random things to snap, so here you go!

I’ll be back with more videos and blog posts about the Samsung Galaxy S!

In the mean time, find these other users on twitter to follow their journey with the Samsung Galaxy S:
@ariffshah @Marc_ky @tekong @galvintan @runningandrew @atreyustrange @sapiensbryan @minishorts @keemanxp

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I am quite blessed because I have never experienced any major acne problems but I have never been particularly happy with my lack of a glow. I long to be one of those girls who look just a little pink in the face, a natural blush. I’ve been to a few beauticians and every time I get my skin assessed, I would be told that my skin is actually very dry and that my pores are big. Big pores run in my family and when I apply my foundation, it can be a little gross up close because tiny little opaque dots can be seen where the foundation is more concentrated. I have some blackheads splattered across my T-zone too and back in A-levels, I would squirt out whiteheads from my nose to gross Chien out. She calls it my Medusa nose.

So yes, as you probably expect, this is a product review! One that I am very very happy to do because I got free products from Cellnique to try!! Yay!! I even have some 50 samples to give away. Scroll all the way down for details – read the post first la though, please.

I have long heard of the brand from my friends who frequent beauticians and also my mum who advocates Cellnique. My brother who had a little bit of an acne problem going on a couple of years back, had his skin all cleared up after a few treatments. And what with his one year in the Uk, sure damn nice lah his skin. *jealous*

Selina from Cellnique has approached me with a range of products from B•liv by Cellnique that would suit my skin condition. B•liv was originally known as ‘Cellnique Pro Series’ but it has been rebranded to keep up with young people like… ahem, us. To..ahem, match our on-the-go, stylish and confident lifestyle. I know some days I might think I’m a little too old for certain things but sometimes when you have nice products to try out, you’ll take pride being in the young adults age group. Very happy actually to be on the nubile side of my 20s.

Myself and my exciting box of beauty products from B•liv Cellnique!

Due to my very very packed schedule attempting to finish up with my final year clinical management report and clinic quotas in the past few weeks (tears were shed, hairs were pulled out, nightmares were dreamed, weight was lost (YAY), heart attacks given by ffk patients etc), I finally had time to do the review. Despite my heavy schedule, I was using the products everyday diligently. In all honestly, I have very poor compliance with beauty products. I buy them, use it once or twice and forget about it. But since I had to do a review, I kept at the regime.

I never really believed that beauty products can do wonders for me (sort of jaded about myself already) but even before doing the review or telling anyone that I was using a new range of products, I have been getting compliments on my skin! True story!! I was also pleasantly surprised because no one ever told me that I looked radiant before, so I guess it is really happening now!

Here’s a before photo taken during my ADSALympics event, an annual sports week at my dental faculty that drains us of all energy and soul.

I know there’s no obvious flaws (skin I mean, the rest you just pretend you never notice anything, don’t have to make it obvious ya) but you can see I’m not actually glowing. That’s the reflection of the sun. I just look…….yellow.

One more artsy shot with my camwhoring shadow behind me.

So here’s what was inside the goodie box:

L-r: Shrink and Tighten, Shrink and Tighten + and Off With Those Heads

L-r: Leach Me, A sample of Got Me Covered

Off With Those Heads is to do away with the blackheads and whiteheads.

It is a sebum gel that you can spread across your T-zone, massaging it into your skin until the wet feeling is gone. The gel just absorbs into your skin! It also feels fresh because there is a nice minty smell.

According to the description given, your clogged pores get soften thus extractions of the blackheads become easier. WIth the tea tree oil and witch hazel extract, they keep acne and comedones at bay plus aloe vera to keep the skin hydrated.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take any before and after photos of my blackheads. I know I should have..sigh. I do think that my blackheads are getting less.. at least new ones don’t crop up. I just need to get some extractions done on the existing ones now that they are easier to remove.

For my craters, we have Shrink and Tighten which is to be used together with Shrink and Tighten +. The consistency is more fluid than Off With Those Heads with a slight yellow tinge to the gel .the smell is also more fruity than Off With Those Heads!

I have to say I am quite impressed with its functions. Shrink and Tighten pump collagen into your open pores to seal it, sort of a barrier protection from future big pores! It has Vitamin B3 which helps to hydrate the skin, Vitamin C for healing and as an antioxidant and Oleanolic Acid which has anti-inflammatory properties.

Shrink and Tighten + is the one to thank to give your skin that glow you’ll get after using these products, imho.

Fresh from the bottle, the formula is quite oily and when you rub it all over your face, you might feel a little irritated at first because you’ll be like, “Great, just what I need. More grease on my face, ughh.” But if you keep rubbing, rubbing and rubbing it in, you’ll realize that it gets absorbed into your skin leaving your skin to feel supple and hydrated without any greasy feeling at all! Even your fingers don’t feel greasy, just moisturized! z

Use it at night so that collagen production can work overtime and help to reduce those pores. The L-ascorbic acid helps with skin lightening, Witch Hazel extract for prevention of acne and comedones and Vitamin B5 for hydration.

See how oily it looks in the bottle?

About two weeks into using the product. At the sides of my nose, it is quite ugly lah with all the pores coalescing together forming unsightly holes. Applying foundation to the sides of my nose can be quite a bitch.

About a month after using. It looks smoother over all! No one’s gonna stretch the sides of my nose when they see me right. So, this is good enough for a clear base to put your make-up. Even the pores look more evened out.

Then we have Leach Me which is a moisturizing mask that does deep moisturizing, brightening and age preventing. Brace yourself ya, I’m gonna throw some complicated chemical names at you.

Sodium 1-Pyrollidonecarboxylate helps with water retention, it helps the skin to better hold moisture. Acetyl Hexapeptide – 8 is for reducing wrinkles (score!!), Acerola Fruit extract to prevent aging and is used as an antioxidant and other fruit acids complex which are used for exfoliation, skin hydrating and help simulate new cell regeneration.

The entire packet is soaked with the formula. Upon removing the mask, it is actually dripping with the formula!

As you can see, it is very very very wet. Formula was dribbling down my chin which I rubbed into my neck. No use having a young face and a wrinkly old neck right? So better to make the most out of it! The mask can be used once or twice a week.

Cannot smile when having the mask on or else formula will get into my mouth!

Got Me Covered is a sunblock + foundation formula for everyday use. It has a nice sheen to it upon applying, nothing too obvious. Sometimes foundation makes us look overly made up for our day-to-day activities, so this is ideal and it also allows the skin to breathe properly.

It comes with UV protector which helps in anti-aging, used as an anti-oxidant and suncreen. Salicylic Acid  helps with exfoliation and the formula has a natural foundation colour that matches your skin tone.

The thin sheen that I was talking about. Nothing too cakey.

After applying the foundation. Looks very natural right?

So that pretty much sums up my experience with B•liv after using it for one whole month!

I’m not tooting my own horn, but the pink glow that I have always wanted is there!!

A happier photo to show off the pinkness on the apples of the cheek!

To further accentuate the glow.

Cellnique has been so kind to offer 50 free samples of Off With Those Heads! So all you blackhead clogged girls (and boys!) can send your full name and mailing address to fbfreesample@blivskin.com with the subject “jayelleenelial.com“. Be quick though, the offer ends 1 week from now! This means…you have until 19th of June 2010! Hurry!

If you are keen to buy their products, head on over to  the B•liv by Cellnique website! Should your purchases be above USD60, you can opt for their free exclusive B•liv recycle bag instead of the usual packaging box. Head on over to their microsite, Cellnique Earth Campaign to support their No Paper. No Bag initiative!

If you are interested, go join one of this girl’s OPI/China Glaze sprees. Be quick though, OPI is suing online shops selling OPIs at dirt cheap prices (hee!) and thus this particular website called Transdesign is liquidating their stocks. I want to get some…but I really don’t want to spend another RM100++ on nail polishes. Beautiful as they are, but spending RM100 on nail polish can’t be done too often.  China Glaze colours look quite pretty too but I have not tried their products! Maybe one day. I am not sure if they are sold in Malaysia but this girl listed the price at about RM17++ per bottle!

There is no doubting the quality of OPI nail polishes though. Dubbed the Mercedes of Nail Polishes, it is no wonder why every single nail salon out there has a big window display of OPI colours. I hope to have that many OPI colours one day. A girl can dream.

For now, I started off with Malaysian Mist (far left), Off With Her Red, No Room For The Blues, Suzi Says Feng Shui and that is Brenda’s All The Berry Best. If your purchase is above Rm100, then the lowyat forum girl will give you free postage!

I got Malaysian Mist because it is a lovely nude shade and how can you not buy something with the word Malaysia on something so famous in the international arena? It sucks to be a dental student because we will get chastise for our bright and colourful nails. I can’t remember when was the last time I indulged in a little nail art fun. I stopped messing around with nail art around 2004 because my entire bag of 50 over bottles of nail polish crashed to the floor when a college classmate dropped it. I lost my love for nail art on that day because I was so demotivated about the loss of half my nail polish collection.

As a result, I never really caught on to the trendy Japanese nail art designs that are almost everywhere these days. I wish I did though. They are so pretty!

I did however sort of jumped back on the bandwagon when I found out about FIMO Nail Art canes. These canes are made from polymer clay and I don’t blame you if you thought that they are erasers. Apparently FIMO is a special type of polymer clay which is quite flexible.

I took in like 150 designs (about 700 sticks altogether) to be sold on The Sticker Monster and damn, they are going like hot cakes. I couldn’t be happier.

As you can see, it is quite soft.

With a kitchen knife, you can slice the cane into thin slices. I’m quite lousy at that so a few came out rather thick.

Choosing a few canes for myself and slicing them up. Most fimo nail art cane users claim that a stick can get them up to 100 pieces if they slice it thin enough. As you can see, mine are rather thick.

Another angle of the cane slices.

With flash!! *don’t hit me*

To accompany the fimo nail art slices, I used a little bit of my Swarovski Grade YHB Crystals to adorn the nails. These can also be found at The Sticker Monster. Promo abit.

On the thumb I started off with No Room For The Blues, a happy shade of the brightest of blues.

I am not very creative so I simply picked a few slices and slapped ‘em on. For the crystals I used Blue Zircon SS10 and Aqua Bohemica SS6.

The idea is to embed the slices in before the nail polish dries. A top coat can be used to go over the slices but I didn’t use it because it would have made the crystals look murky.

Malaysian Mist for the second finger!

A fruity themed one! I added some Rose SS6 crystals too!

I have always wanted a gorgeous red polish and I am so glad I found it.

Off With Her Red is from the OPI Alice in Wonderland Collection. I wanted to get the Mad As A Hatter which was a kaleidoscope of colour but oh well, another time maybe.

I have bought red polishes from Sinma before (pretty much the only place I can find blood red nail polishes) but ughhhh the quality sucks serious balls and even with an amateur eye, my cheap ass nail polish colour will stick out like a sore thumb (pun intended) with its streaks and blotches. Sorry for being a nail polish snob. I use cheap brands like Elianto too okay! Though I must say, Elianto is not that great either but the colours are all so fun.   You can’t have everything I guess.

My supplier sent me some new Swarovski Grade YHB Crystals in a few other sizes and colours. I used Light Rose SS10 on this one with a few Crystal SS6 and Light Rose SS6 along the sides of my nail. A chanel-love-snowflake themed nail. Okay fine, I don’t really know what I was getting at. :\

Posing with the leftover crystals.

Three done! Two more to go!

My little nail art workstation.

Mmmm..Suzi Says Feng Shui is from the OPI Hong Kong Collection. A lovely shade of teal isn’t it? I am actually trying to recapture the memory of my very first nail polish – a bright blue shade with tiny bits of glitter on it. I was 10 years old and had just discovered the joys one can get at a Guardian or Watsons pharmacy. I remember reading every bit of the bottle and it was apparently made in Paris. I loved it all the more knowing that it was imported from far away and in such a funky colour too. My nails were never any other colour except for the colours my grandmother had which were safe colours like pinkish red, pinkish brown, pinkish pink and a nude shade or two.

As I had ran out of colours to play with, I used Off With Her Red and No Room For The Blues to make a Superman themed nail. A little ribbon to emasculate Superman with some tiny crystals to finish it off.

And there you have it, my entertainment for the night.

I love it! Simplicity is the best.

You know you’ll have to bear with more than one photo of my finished product.

It sucks that I have to remove everything before clinics the following day. Poll TIME! Would you, as a patient, mind if your dentist had funky nails?

Left over slices for another day of procrastination.

There’s another nail art trend called Minx Nails that I am looking forward to try. It’s sort of like a foil plastered onto your nail. Imagine mirror-like sheen on your nails. Glossy is SO out. Mirror, metallic, so so much hotter! And if it is nice, I’ll take it in and put it up on The Sticker Monster.

Oooh ooh, while I’m at it, here’s another product of my procrasination. I deco-ed my Satio:

I allowed some space for the camera cover to slide. Cute right??? Sales are doing well, so I am hoping to take in more designs! Click here for ready stock designs!

Next up, I am planning to do something to my car bonnet. Dad, Mervyn, don’t scream. It’s not permanent.

As time goes by, we have started working on real patients and haven’t had much time to breathe, let alone to update about what has been going on in the school of dentistry. As a final year dental student with almost 8 more months to go, I think I am fit to write in further detail. My last detailed write up was in Year 1. I wanted to write one after I completed every year but I just didn’t find the energy to.

This is not a very good write up as it was actually a reply to someone who was asking some questions at the lowyat forums. So here we go:

Getting Into AIMST’s Bachelor of Dental Surgery Programme

I remember I was asked to use my actual pre-u results to apply for the course and the process was super stressful because I was away at National Service and had to rely on my parents to do everything. What I can remember is that your forecast results will not be of any use. As for min. requirements, please check the AIMST’s Faculty of Dentistry website for updated information. Old ladies like me might not really remember exactly what the requirements were.

In recent times, AIMST Dentistry has opened their doors to JPA scholarship holders. Back when it was still new, there were many more seats available and there’s only about five foundation students in my class. Most of us are from STPM, A-levels, SAM and various other foundation programmes ie. CIMP, Uni of Otago Foundation… etc.

But no harm trying if you meet the min. requirements on the website! But keep in mind that priorities are given to AIMST foundation students. So if you are fresh out of form5, it’s best if you take the foundation course at AIMST if you are definitely sure about studying dentistry at AIMST.  As it is, there are plenty of students in the foundation course itself fighting for spots in the degree programmes at AIMST. The hottest course is obviously the MBBS course.

The recent addition of JPA scholarships for AIMST’s dentistry course might be good news to some of you but to those of you, who are like me, not very smart, might be happy to know that up to RM100k in PTPTN loans can be available for you as long as you meet the requirements. (poor enough, results okay enough. Can you get into college with your SPM qualifications? Then should be good enough to get PTPTN.) It’s a loan that allows you up to 20 years to repay and has a 3% interest rate.

From the time I first entered, AIMST now allocate more seats to their foundation students and don’t forget that you’ll have to contend with JPA scholars as well. We first started off with about 50 seats but back then, only 41 seats were filled up. With some quitting midway to study medicine and some having to repeat a year or two, we were left with 37 students who thankfully have been together for the last four years.

Academic wise, we have mostly foreign lecturers who conduct the lessons and most of these lecturers have travelled across the globe to various universities. We have a physiology lecturer who wrote our textbook and has been to plenty of countries working as a lecturer. Local lecturers are few though. That’s for the medical faculty who used to conduct our medical subjects even though we were in the school of dentistry.

As for the school of dentistry, we also have plenty of foreign lecturers who are mostly specialists and have been extremely patient in imparting their wisdom to us noobs in the dental clinics. *suck up suck up* We have had visiting lecturers from the UK for the dentistry subjects in Year 1 and Year2 and our hospital director (who also doubles up as our Dental Public Health lecturer) who was once the director of the ministry of oral health division. She has helped a lot with assimilating our syllabus, making sure we are inline with the requirements of the accreditation board and the malaysian dental council.

Facilities At The School of Dentistry

If you are a new student at AIMST, then chances are you’ll be stuck staying in the hostels. Most of the seniors have left and gone to stay in nearby housing areas where the rent is so much cheaper.

But this bit of my post is about the facilities that we have at the school of dentistry.

I can’t find a clearer photo but this is the most recent picture I have of the entire dental building. It was taken from the admin building on the AIMST 2009 Convocation Day which explains the canopies below.

We have a simulation lab, dental technology lab, radiology department, one main polyclinic, another polyclinic for padiatric dentistry and orthodontic patients, various briefing rooms, two lecture halls that can accommodate roughly two hundred students each, oral surgery department, a reception polyclinic, locker rooms for the clinical students and a common room for the clinical students to faster faster go chup sofa to take afternoon nap.(I can usually be found fast asleep at 12-1.15pm everyday in the common room with my own blanket on one of the sofas. Don’t disturb me or I will bite.) My biggest competitors are Maxis and Poh Yee or any of the boys from 5.3.

Trying to kick CY out of my favourite sofa.

In the simulation lab, we have simulators for us to practice various procedures on. Year 2 students will spend most of their time there during practical sessions. It comes equipped with LCD screens for every seat as most procedures are explained using audiovisual equipments.

As for the dental technology lab, it is divided into a bigger one and a smaller one.

For the bigger dental tech lab, the students learn the basics of denture making, orthodontic wire bending and the likes there.

In the smaller dental tech lab, alongside a couple of permanent dental technicians, clinical students spend their free time completing dentures for their patients. We have come a long way now compared to almost four years ago where we didn’t even have our own centralized gas supply. Back in the good old days, the pioneer students shared a stove among themselves to melt wax for our denture making lessons.

In the radiology department, new patients are sent there to get diagnostic x-rays taken.

As for the polyclinics, there are 36 bays there and each bay is fully equipped with a dental chair and its supporting equipments. So at any given time of the week, groups of clinical students (Year 3 to Year 5) can be found working on their patients under the supervision of the clinical lecturers.

Here’s a photo I managed when I sneaked into the unfinished dental hospital late 2007:

A far cry from the skeletal version I saw! Each bay is occupied by an operator and a dental surgery assistant (could be a student, could be a DSA hired by the school as well.) and instruments are taken from a dispensary within the polyclinic. After each patient, the entire area is cleaned up and disinfected by the DSA.

For the orthodontic and paediatric dentistry polyclinic, the bays are fewer but it is appropriately decorated to make the paediatric patients feel at ease when they come in for their treatments.

The equipments are exactly the same as the ones found in the polyclinics.

We even have an oral hygiene instruction room where we educate the children about proper toothbrushing techniques.

In the oral surgery department, extractions and minor oral surgery procedures are done there. Most of the time our oral surgeon is there doing the more complicated procedures but he will supervise students who are carrying out normal extractions and other minor oral surgery procedures.

The locker rooms for the clinical students are for us to stash our scrubs overnight and our bags when we go into the clinics during the day. It was also an unwritten rule among us that all umbrellas are to be placed at the top of our lockers. Very pretty too!

As you can see, I wasted no time in personalizing mine. It was also a marketing gimmick for The Sticker Monster. Not to my own dental coursemates lah, but to be used as something to entice my customers on the sticker blog. I’ll remove the stickers when I graduate, or if any junior wants to take over my locker because of the stickers, LET ME KNOW! I’ll even throw a few stickers into the locker so you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

As for the common room, it is fully utilized by the dental students. Actually it reminds me a little bit of my ant farm when I was young. You know the kind that you purchase from Toys ‘R Us. You put some sand inside, a bit of sugar, and wait for the ants to come in and build their home? Same thing happened with the common room.

The school made a room specially for us to chill out in between clinics/classes, and we’ve gone in and studied/munched on snacks/slept/gossiped and so much more!

Kelvin, one of my juniors from Batch 2, had this hilarious idea to do up the entire place. He even drew an artist’s impression of it. Kelvin, if you want me to remove this pic, let me know alright?

The temperature in the common room is by far the most comfortable. The most uncomfortable aircondition temperature is the corridor between the dental technology lab and the simulation lab. I’m pretty sure I once saw icicles formed on the glass panels along that corridor.

The main function of the reception polyclinic is to assess new patients and to assign them to Year 3, Year 4 or Year 5 clinical students appropriately.

What you can expect in Year 1:

The basic sciences like anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and very very basic dentistry. You’ll learn the anatomy of each and every tooth and you’ll be dealing with cadavers, focusing more on the head and neck region.

We have 10 cadavers the last time I checked (this was about 2 years ago?) in 2 tubs of formalin, fished out anytime an anatomy class was conducted. We even have names for the cadavers whom we affectionately call Stinky, Smelly and Yucky. With all due respect.

As for dentistry, you will have a group project somewhere in the middle of the first year on the public oral health services in Malaysia. We had to gather information regarding all the dental services around the country – army sector, dental clinics at schools etc etc. We made posters and they were up in the library as an exhibition. Our group walked away with second best poster I remember. Special mention, apparently. Till this day, I don’t know what my deputy dean meant by special mention.

For the practical aspect, we were started off with simple lessons in tooth carving and dental plaster manipulation. This was actually done early in the second year. As the first batch, plenty of kinks were still being ironed out (ie. some equipments were not ready yet). These practical classes are now carried out in year 1.

In your second year:

This is when things get heated up. Your subjects built up and you’ll get deeper into dentistry as we are then introduced to conservative dentistry (where you learn about dental caries, restorations and the likes), prosthodontics (learning how to make complete and partial dentures), dental materials, periodontology (the tartar/calculus between your teeth, scaling etc) ..and other more detailed stuff like oral anatomy (learn about the microstructure of the tooth and its surrounding tissues) and oral biochemistry (How your teeth functions, how your mouth functions…. functions and processes in the oral cavity, basically).

It’s also a very exciting year because you are finally able to enter the simulation labs and you will be learning how to make cavity preparations and do restorations on fake teeth or even real teeth (which we have to set in a plaster of paris jaw) which you have collected from dental clinics. You can finally touch the metal instruments which used to look really scary at any dental clinic. You will also learn how to make a complete denture and a partial denture.

You will learn all the basic clinical skills like restorations and scalings. Because of your denture lessons, you will be spending almost two afternoons a week in the dental tech lab. It is fun because the dental technology lecturers are really nice and the environment is really relaxed unlike a classroom or a simulation lab where you will get chided if your cavity is too big.

Second year is known to be a an extremely tedious year because there are plenty of medical and dental subjects to study. Most scary is pharmacology. You’ll feel angry because you didn’t want to be a doctor and feel like throwing away all the bloody medical subjects (pathology, microbiology, pharmacology) notes. I had like notes that reached up to my thighs okay. Studying for the final exam in second year was pure torture. Possibly the worst exams I ever had to sit for. SPM comes a close second. Throughout A-levels I was like, “wats happening..”. So was quite numb towards exams. Just surprised I didn’t fail. To this day I don’t know how I got through A-levels maths.

Aside from the medical and dentistry subjects, some humanities subjects are thrown in such as Communications and Social and Behavioural Sciences. If I’m not mistaken I had to study something to do with religion. This was not the stupid university papers we had to sit for (philosophy, psychology, critical thinking and three classes of english for general, specific and academic purposes) but actual subjects to pass dentistry. I absolutely loathed having to study for those subjects. Humanities were never my forte. They were all so vague!

in third year:

Your hours slow down a little. I would say it is almost a drastic change from year 2. At first my batch and the batch below me thought that the relaxed year was only for my batch since the dental hospital has yet to be ready at that time but it seems that the hours were almost as short for the second batch, and as we have recently heard, for the third batch as well.

In the first half of the year, you still have those dreaded medical subjects (medicine and surgery), but these will cease towards the second term. We get posted to nearby hospitals to observe how to clerk patients, learn to use the sphygmomanometer (take blood pressure) and basically do ward rounds. Super sien. I didn’t want to be a doctor! *struggles*

In third year, you will enter the clinics and start having patients of your own. You will start to formulate treatment plans and make diagnosis. You will then be treating these patients and it is up to you to arrange them according to your allocated sessions. (we started off with 2 sessions a week).

Your dental subjects will still be on-going. Second year subjects are studied in further detail and on top of that you now have dental public health (super dreaded subject), endodontics (root canal treatments), oral radiology, pain control and more. You will still have sessions in the simulation lab where you will start learning more detailed clinical techniques such as root canal treatments on the various teeth.

We were slowly weaned off the simulators and began taking each others’ medical and dental history in the clinics. This was before we were assigned patients. We also had to inject local anesthesia into each other during our local anesthesia practical classes. One of my classmates left the needle hanging at the back of my mouth next to my lower wisdom tooth (this was for an inferior alvenolar nerve block) because he panicked half way and returned it to my teacher. Oh my days. But thank god I was thoroughly numbed. Good times.

I just remember it was a damn relaxing year. Also because we were the first batch, so our dental hospital was not ready yet. Yes, we have our very own dental hospital which is also our dental school.

In fourth year:

Classes become so few that sometimes you even forget to go for class. Just kidding. This is because clinics will take up most of our time. At our peak, we had up to four sessions a week. Each session is from 9am to 12pm or 2pm to 5pm. The faster ones among us can fit in two patients. We also have four other sessions where we function as dental surgery assistants to our classmates whose groups have a session during that particular time frame.

But in the last couple of months, AIMST have started a training course for dental surgery assistants so we will have less to do and have more time and energy to focus on treating patients.

It is in this year that we are finally free of all medical subjects. We are introduced to oral surgery (extractions etc etc), paediatric dentistry, advanced cons (veneers, crowns etc). Classes are almost once or twice a week.

Somewhere in the middle of the year, under the oral public health subject, we were divided into nine groups of four to learn about the dental public sector at various parts of the country.

We travelled to Sabah, Sarawak, Terengganu (i managed to visit Tasik Kenyir!), Kelantan, Johor and Perak. The more modern states were left out.

We had to do a presentation and report on what we learned etc.

In fifth and final year:

As for now, we have completed a compulsory oral health education visit to various kindergartens around the Sungai Petani district.

We went to these kindergartens to have some fun and to teach the kids there about good oral hygiene and at the same time, to woo them into the clinics for our paedo sessions.

We also completed a week in the oral surgery department (which is also located within our dental hospital) and there will be many more to come according to our new timetable.

We will also be going into hospitals in Sungai Petani and Alor Setar to observe their oral surgery departments and see actual procedures in operating theaters.

In year 5, we still have lectures on orthodontics, oral medicine, advanced conservative dentistry, oral surgery, dental public health, periodontology and almost all the important subjects relating to dentistry.

As for every other week, clinical sessions are going on as usual.

Since I’m only in the first half of my final year, I’ll continue to post it up here when new developments take place.

Assignments and Exams

I would say that the course is more exams orientated in your first two years with three module exams and a final exam at the end of your academic year. One year is divided into four modules with each module being approximately 3 months long.

If you fail a portion of your final exams, you will be given a chance to resit the papers sometime in August. But if you fail that as well, you would have to repeat your academic year. You are only allowed to repeat twice. This means if you fail Year 1, repeat Year 1, and say you pass it the consequent year, go on to year 2, fail it that year, then repeating year 2 is your final chance to repeat any academic year.

As for assignments, they may be few but they do contribute to your final exam results. As for those of us who are already in the clinics, our work in the clinics are being taken into consideration as well for the final results.

In the first two years, Problem Based Learning sessions are held at the end of every module. In PBL sessions, some materials such as a scenario, some diagnostic records and etc are given to the students to analyze the patients’ problems.

We were so happy when there were no more PBL sessions in the third year and fourth year. We spoke too soon because in the fifth year, we started having Orthodontic, Oral Medicine and Paediatric Dentistry seminars where it was basically PBL sessions all over again. This time subject specific too.

AIMST Dental Hospital

At AIMST, we have our very own dental hospital which is opened to anyone and everyone. Expectedly, most of our patients come from the surrounding villages. We have some who come from as far as Penang and Alor Star but these patients find it difficult to fit into our schedule as well. Treatment is free. We are extremely grateful to all the patients who have come so far to the AIMST Dental Hospital as we have been provided with opportunities to learn about a large variety of cases and also to fulfill our quota.

New patients would usually register at the reception and will be brought up to the reception polyclinic where one of our dental officers will do a thorough examination and decide which cases are appropriate for Year 3, Year 4 or Year 5 patients. The patients are placed on a waiting list and when the students need new patients, they will go down to the reception and deal with the admin there to get a new case.

The student will then personally make phone calls to these patients and slot them into their schedules. From here on, the patient is assigned to a particular student and the student needs to be responsible for the patient’s treatments and scheduling.

This is what we wear in the clinics.

We even have a write-up in The Star! Link!

AIMST Dental Students’ Association

In 2007, the AIMST Dental Students’ Association was founded and the first event we had was the Annual AIMST Dental Dinner. The third one is taking place on the 12th of December this year and so far, it has been a grand event that all dental students look forward to. Who wouldn’t like the chance to just go all out and dress up?

Dressed to the nines at the 2nd Annual AIMST Dental Dinner in 2008.

ADSALympics is also another event established by the association and the first ADSALympics was in 2008 where dental students from all the batches congregated together to battle it out at the sports arena in various sporting events.

Cheerleaders from the third batch who stayed enthusiastic throughout the entire week of games.

We even have our own t-shirt too! But I think a new one will be coming up soon enough.

Another two aimst dental traditions are the Mid Autumn Festival Celebrations and the Juniors’ Orientation.

The juniors’ orientation was initially done by the first batch of medical students who conducted it when the pioneer batch first entered dentistry in 2005. We then took on the task when the second intake came in! Now, the ADSA committee have taken charge of it entirely but it is usually the second and third years who are in charge of the games.

As for the Mid Autumn Festival Celebrations, it was the initiative of the third batch though the seniors have had their own mid autumn festival gatherings before that. Because of the third batch, all dental students come together every year at the clock tower-cafeteria area to play with lanterns.

This year, thanks to the efforts of the ADSA committee, a bazaar was held in conjunction with the celebrations and like every year, Kong Ming lanterns are released and it was a grand success this year as other students from the university were invited to partake in the celebrations as well!

Taken during our AGM where we elect the new committee.

The 08/09 ADSA committee during one of our weekly meetings. But seeing how tense everyone looked, this was probably near one of the events.

I think I covered almost all aspects of the school. Should anybody have anymore questions, feel free to ask me. (Sorry I cannot help you with admissions.)

For the lecturers who are worried about the pictures or information here, please feel free to let me know if there is anything I should amend!

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I love the Xpax’s envelope. Feels very solid.

All I had to do was type ‘F’ and send it to 32665 and there it was, one whole week worth of Facebooking right from my mobile phone only for RM1 a week. 

Sending out my virgin FB status update! It appears immediately. Like faster than I can check my profile.

And so I wanted to send a message to someone who would layan me… obviously I chose Chee Kiang.

To leave a wall post, just type “wall (FB username) and then your message.

I typed Lam Chee Kiang, but the Xpax Facebook SMS was smart enough to detect that I’ve got a few Lams in my list.

My guilty pleasure is to constantly check for notifications. And these get sent RIGHT to your phone for FREE! So when I turned my phone on, the notifications were pouring in. 

Another one of my notifications. It even updates you about photo comments, messages to your inbox, notes and so forth. 

Aside from receiving, you can also write on your friends’ walls, poke them, write notes, send messages, request for a certain profile, add friends and more. 

Here’s an example of the statuses I updated:

If you’re keen to test it out yourself, I highly recommend it. Go check it out!

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I have long heard that carriers in other countries allow their users to sms updates to their facebook and wouldn’t this be awesome? This is the first Facebook SMS service in Malaysia, the rest have yet to catch up! I particularly like texting on my SE W508 (and before, my old SE Z610i) as the keyboard on my xperia is not so easy to use. ;\ So this does sound rather convenient for me. ithinkimightwantablackberrybutthescreenissobigonmyxperiahmmmishouldstopusingmoney..

As sexy as smartphones are, sometimes using an old school mobile phone makes texting a breeze. I tried to surf with my mobile phone (and paid through my nose la please) the other day when my xperia ran out of juice, it was so fun updating my Facebook with the simple old school texting!

I guess this is where Xpax Facebook SMS comes in handy. THANK YOU XPAX!!! It is more awesome than surfing the net with your current mobile plans, you can like send message, add friends, update your status, poke and much more just by smsing to a certain number.

I’m going to get myself an xpax starter pack tomorrow to try this service out. For RM1 per week for unlimited usage….*salivate* furthermore, all messages SENT AND RECEIVED are free during the promotional period! Damn awesome lah. Xpax is so kind to my student pocket. Can’t wait to try it tomorrow. Will let you know if you should get one too if you guys are as much of an FB addict as I am.
  

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Pity I can’t go for this one. Would really love to go for one of Douglas’ comedies. This is the matured Jolene Lai who can’t afford to shift her schedule around anymore as compared to the immature 16 year old Jolene who cried and cried when her school magazine teacher didn’t allow her to interview him for the yearbook. (I went ahead with it anyway and it got published!)

Not many people can claim to have met their celebrity crushes before. I’ve seen Douglas Lim on tv since I was 11 years old and at that time he was the skinny hairdresser who owned the Stylo-Milo hair salon on Kopitiam. Didn’t think much of him until Homecoming came on Astro in 2002!!

 There he was, one of the sons of that typical malaysian chinese family who just came back from uni and was unable to speak chinese well… what’s not to like?! I was in love straight away.

I became the Homecoming + Douglas Lim evangelist. That’s what everyone at school knew me as.

I managed to get in contact with Vision New Media, the company that produced Kopitiam and Homecoming and was allowed to conduct an interview with him for my school magazine. So that was the first time I met Douglas Lim. Amanda, Esther and my mum came with me and I was feeling nauseous all the way down to Section 14, PJ. It was surreal, meeting Douglas Lim for the first time.

I saw him a few times after that, once bumping into him at KLCC and for the first time discovering that he had a girlfriend (who is now his wife. ). I remember ducking into Kinokuniya after saying hello to him and smsed the girls and screeched about my chance encounter. Amanda and I also saw him another time at  the Kopitiam 5th Anniversary party and we both won some contest and were supposed to be guest actors for an episode which never materialized. LOL.

It wasn’t till three years later that I got to see Douglas again. It was at the musical he starred in called Broken Bridges. I went up to him and he saw me and called my name! He actually remembered my name and he shook my hand!! I was all fluttery and we talked about his new home, his dogs, etc. 

After that first musical, Douglas continued to perform in a few other productions. After coming out of Broadway Parodies Lah, he saw me approaching him and he gave me a hug to say hello. I had to go home and tell the whole world. Hahaha.

So yeah, I have been very lucky. I got to meet my celebrity crush and actually talk to him on a personal level.

So I wish this won’t be the only time that MACC will be holding a comedy show. 
 

As for Chi Ho, I met him when I was the make-up artist for Hip Hopera, a musical by Taylor’s College Society of Performing Arts! It was probably the most elaborate student production I’ve ever had the chance to participate in. I dragged Chien with me to be my co-makeup artist and we did all the girls’ faces and hair, including the boys’ as well. Chi Ho was a senior at college at that time and was part of the comedy group The Come Back Kings which consists of a few of the other college mates. They did short skits as fillers during the intermission and their most memorable skit would be The Cockroach Dance. It trumps the Evolution of Dance video ANYTIME. Wish someone uploaded their dance on video, can laugh until you die. 

As for Jen Han, the other member of “MACC”, he appears to be a name that I think I remember hearing since my high school days. A friend of Amanda’s perhaps? I can’t remember now and I *think* I remember reading about him in the papers? Am I remembering clearly?

Anyway, here’s the press release Chi Ho sent me. It’s already very funny, so there’s no need for me to quote from it. I’ll just do a copy and paste.  

“M.A.C.C.

Malaysian Association of Chinese Comedians 

1st Easy Going Meeting

Douglas Lim had a dream. A dream to bring laughter to the world. A dream to spread joy across the land. Unfortunately, fate conspired against him. He was born Chinese and was not eligible for Raja Lawak.

But Douglas Lim never gave up. Convinced that the Chinese can be funny, he scoured the country for like-minded (and like-coloured) people. He searched high and low, far and wide and upside down. After 3 years, the search has ended. For behold, he is tired AND he has found 2 other jokers.

Together they are M.A.C.C. – the Malaysian Association of Chinese Comedians and this is their first E.G.M. (Easy Going Meeting). On the agenda are funny observations, song parodies, impersonations and witty revelations from the founding members of M.A.C.C – Douglas Lim, Jenhan and Chi Ho. 

No stone is left unturned. Nothing is sacred – well except for sacred things which MUST NEVER be questioned by ALL Malaysians. M.A.C.C.’s first E.G.M. promises to be a laugh-out-loud affair for the whole family providing that your family is:

-English speaking

->easily amused

-at the show

M.A.C.C.’s first E.G.M. will commence at the PJ Live Arts Centre, Jaya ONE, on the following days:-

Saturday, 17 October @ 9pm

Sunday,   18 October @ 3pm – Matinee

Sunday,   18 October @ 9pm

Saturday, 24 October @ 9pm

Sunday,   25 October @ 3pm – Matinee

Sunday,   25 October @ 9pm

ALL SHOWS AT ONLY RM 33.88

Tickets available at TICKETCHARGE (603) 2241 9999 OR visit www.ticketcharge.com.my

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

Douglas Lim

Douglas Lim is now primarily a STAND-UP COMEDIAN. But due to his greed, he is also many things. For example, he is an ACTOR on both screen and stage (1957 – Hati Malaya, Los & Faun, TenTenTen, Kopitiam, Homecoming, P.Ramlee the Musical, Tunku the Musical, Broken Bridges, etc…). He is also a COMPOSER, LYRICIST for tv and stage (Kopitiam, Reality, Ghost, Cuci the Musical, etc…).

His stand-up comedy performances include “Eh, Got Free Ticket Ah?” at Actors Studio Bangsar, Comedy Club KL, Comedy Club Singapore, Lake Club Comedy Night, Harith Iskander’s Nationwide Tour, “The June 4th Show” at No Black Tie and numeourous corporate events.   Douglas Lim was nominated for Best Actor in a Comedy at the Asian TV Awards. He lost to Gurmit Singh (Phua Chu Kang)!

Kuah Jenhan 

Having performed on stage since secondary school, Kuah Jenhan is a natural in the performing arts scene. He began his career in stand-up Comedy in The Actors Studio Bangsar’s Freeflow and went on to win the Bond Stand-up Comedy Competition in 2006.

Now an actor, emcee and fresh from his recent appearance for Comedy Club KL alongside international starts Paul Chowdhry and Garry Who, he has performed in countless skits and plays over the years, from school, to college and now in Malaysian theatre including Rose Rose I Love You, No Limits and Ismail – The Last Days. Dubbed as “The Funniest Gravy (Kuah) of Malaysia”, he can be found regularly performing his mix of locally inspired comedy at Time Out KL’s Comedy Thursday and other YCOM shows around the city. 

Phoon Chi Ho

 
A comedian, actor, director and producer; the multitalented Chi Ho has been in performing arts since he discovered his love for it in high school and have directed and acted in several plays during his college life. Upon graduating, he chose to delve into theatre management by becoming the theatre supervisor of The Actors Studio Bangsar.  He now is a member of the skit-based The ComeBackKings, written, acted and directed 15 webisodes for gua.com and launched a successful stand-up comedy career in 2008. 

He now performs regularly around the Klang Valley, organising and performing in comedy shows for the Young Comedians of Malaysia (YCOM), a local comedy support group. Cheeky and very original, his stand-up routine sees him putting on a facade that is more familiar to his Chinese heritage.”

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