Birthday collaboration videos - times TWO!

I feel so grateful to be included in this massive birthday collaboration that was made for my very good friend on Youtube and someone that I really look up to and is one of my inspirations to do better in my video editing... Jason Telmo a.k.a. Chinaeyes22 (on YT) who works for ABS-CBN. His birthday falls on 4th of June. This great birthday video is done by another great video editor, Reggie Soriano a.k.a. RegiSor94.

And after a month...

Another birthday collaboration was made vice versa. Jason Telmo made a whopping birthday video collaboration for his (and my) good friend, Reggie Soriano. What's great (or odd?) is Reg's birthday falls on Aug.12. Of all the 365 days, he's got the same birthday as Marl! :-) Anyway, Jason managed to get 70 friends (and channels) to join this uberly massive birthday video for Reggie, that it was even divided to two parts. See my bit on Part 2.

Check out their Youtube channels: RegiSor94 & ChinaEyes22

One night in Qingdao

After our gig on Saturday, it was hard to cool down and take a few hour sleep. But I managed to force myself to an hour nap before getting up at 6:30AM. Left the hotel at 7AM and took the taxi to the airport. The moment we boarded the plane, my eyes started to fall. Napped a bit but got disturbed by the crew when they were serving breakfast. Forgot to turn on the DND button on my forehead. LOL

Landing in Qingdao, I could actually tell that it's so different from Beijing. The air is fresh and although it was a hot day, it's not as humid as Beijing. The taxi passed by infront of Qingdao Beer City which was already swarmed by lots of people. Just noticed that the rides that they have this year are different from the rides that they had last year and the year before. And when the taxi was making its turn to Yindu Garden, I got so excited as it used to be our "home" for almost two years and couldn't wait to be there again. We went straight to DJ Jboy's apartment to rest for a while while waiting for Jboy's wife, Che-Che, to come back from her class (she teaches English in a Korean school). Our friends Jermaine and his wife Tina arrived, too. They brought with them Marl's photo equipments and bags that Marl asked them to buy online.

After lunch, I went to Jimo Market with Tina and Che-Che to buy some stuff. Then at past 3 in the afternoon, we just picked up our stuff in their house before hitting the beach for the BBQ. A tent has been set up while Jboy did the BBQ-ing. I met the current Filipino band playing at the Qbar now and they're all nice. I also saw my Russian friend Rada, who was invited to be the model for the photo shoot. My job for the day was not to be THE model. I was THE makeup artist and I loved it. Rada's face is beautiful and having her fully made-up with colors just made her look like a doll! I also lent her the dress that I brought with me and some props and accessories. But don't fret because I managed to be shot towards the end of the shoot, just before the sunset. I wanted to be different and just painted my face with colors. Even my lips are painted with yellow and green! After sunset, the three photographers, Marl, Jboy and Jermaine, setup their flash lighting for flash photography. Then we wrapped up the BBQ session for a more fun party later on.

Marl and I just had an hour of nap before going to Shangri-La Hotel's Qbar. It was great to be there again and it was even better to see the staff who we have became good friends with. The highlight of the evening was seeing our friend David and his girlfriend Pam. It was great listening to the band, too. And it feels so good just sitting down at Qbar, having fun with friends, while enjoying the band as well. Drinks started flowing at David's table: vodka and my favorite - champagne. I was having so much fun that I kept on gulping champagne down my throat until I got drunk.

Yes, I got effin' drunk!

I remember singing with the band and dancing off my ass. I remember my slurring tongue. I remember Marl trying to stop me from drinking more. I remember bits of happening. But I couldn't remember the sequence of events and how we got home. I remember taking the taxi going to the train station. I was like a robot following Marl wherever he went. LOL.

The train from Qingdao was 6 hours and the seat that we got was not the one with the reclining seat. It's the dining seat wherein we are facing other passengers and between us is a dining table. Oh man! The seat was okay but it was really hard to sleep! I don't know how I managed to sleep through the journey. It's good that the two other passengers infront of us were just talking. Yeah, they were talking for 6 hours!

Reaching the Beijing South Railway Station, I was sooooo thankful. While on a taxi, ll I could think of was our hotel room and bed. And when we reached the hotel, I just removed the makeup that I had on for the past 20 hours, changed and hit the bed. Woke up at 7:30PM and prepared for work. Man, that was such a tiring trip but all worth it because we were able to get some of our stuff that we left there earlier this year and have fun with good old friends.

We're planning for another trip to Qingdao in September, which reminds me to book for 1st class tickets for the train this time. Six hours lying down, that would be nice. Till the next trip again...

Qingdao - here I come!!!

We've been looking forward to this for quite some time now, even when we were still in KL. And now the time has arrived. We're going back to Qingdao for just a day. And night! :-)

Can't wait to see all our friends there. Heard they're planning for a BBQ party by the beach, then a little bit of photo shoot, then just plain fun! It just so happened that the Qingdao Beer Festival 2009 has just commenced yesterday. Hope we'll have time to go there. We also have bunch of things that we left with our friend DJ, Jboy. Oh yes, at last, I'm gonna be getting my printer already! 

Since we couldn't get a train ticket going to Qingdao, we'll be going there by plane. Much expensive at RM760, but I guess it'll be so worth it. We're taking a train back to Beijing on Monday so let's see what adventure we will be having.

Aretha wants to go, too, but she'll be going to Tianjin to see her friends there, too. One day, we'll go to Tianjin with her. One day...

Join me in this adventure on twitter.com/sarita and on qik.com/sarita.

Busted twice

So it was my husband Marl's birthday on Wednesday. And since we are so far away from the Beijing civilization, I planned a little something for him.

First, I got him a surprise birthday cake. Since we are always together 24/7, it was hard to get it organized with the staff. I only had the chance to speak to them during our breaks. So, just before midnight on Tuesday night, I was so anxious about it. I was in fact nervous that my hands turned cold! LOL.

So I went to the toilet and gave them a sign to prepare the cake. Then I went back to the bar and told them to standby because we were just going back onstage for our final set. I called Aretha to tell her that it's ready. But Marl also looked my way. I was --- stuck, and man, I felt a cold rush in my body coz by the way he looked at me, he knew that I was up to something. LOL. He asked, "why?". I just stood there. Then without much further ado, since I felt busted already, I just told him, "Ahihihihi! There's a birthday cake for you" *smiling shyly coz I got busted while pointing to the lit-up cake*.

LOL

Okay so, the three of us got to celebrate his birthday quietly and privately after our gig. When we went up to the room, he uploaded my Colours gallery on his Flickr stream and on our Facebook account. I found a great chance to let our friends know that it's his birthday by sending out private messages to our friends on Facebook. I told them to leave a comment on my Colours gallery which is also Marl's birthday treat. And I did mention in the message to NOT REPLY on that message as I'm trying to keep it from Marl.

So basically, greetings started pouring in and everytime he gets a greeting from somebody we haven't heard from for quite some time, he'd be very happy to read the greeting. And then a handful came again, then another handful of greetings followed. He was wondering why all these people came to know that it's his birthday. I just said, "I don't know", pretending not to know anything about it. LOL.

Until few of the people I sent the message to didn't actually read the part where I said "DO NOT REPLY". He was checking the greetings and saw there were messages in the Facebook inbox. To his shock, it was a reply to my "secret message" which I sent to most of our friends! LOL. And there, I got busted again.

Well at least, he's so happy and overwhelmed with all the greetings. Thanks to everyone who have participated in. And yeah, we had a good laugh about him finding out about the almost-a-hundred-greetings on Facebook.

Posted by ShoZu

"Colours" by the birthday boi, Marl

It's Marl's birthday today and since he's been working on this series since yesterday, I ought to give him the credits for doing such hard work in making beautiful images like these.

"Colours"
It was a lazy Sunday night and we were watching some movies on my husband's new digital media player or whatever it's called. It was our night off and we got really bored in the room. I was chatting with my daughter that night (before her bedtime) as I playfully put different colors of makeup on my eyelid. Marl looked at me and told me, "let's do a photo shoot in the room after our nap". So yeah, basically we had an hour nap on Sunday night and woke up at around one o'clock on Monday morning. Yeah, past midnight. You can't imagine how lively I have tried to be at 4AM for this photo shoot. But I'm glad that the photos turned out great. See for yourself!



Check out this Qik video that I did after our gig:

Sars in Ranch

I'd like to share with you all Marl's fantastic shots of me during our ranch shoot at Danai Alam last June in Kuala Lumpur. It took quite some time for him to edit because we got so busy during our last weeks there since we were moving to Beijing afterwards.

The ranch is owned by our friend, Mr. Terry Teo, that's why we were allowed to do photo shoot. There were three models: myself, Rhea and Melanie. here were three photographers: Marl, Bobby and Jhun. We arrived left the hotel at 6AM, reach the location at 7AM. It was a gloomy morning, very cloudy and no sun. But glad that the photos turned out great!


To view Marl's Flickr photostream, CLICK HERE.