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Review of Annie 2014 starring Rano Iskandar with special guest Singapore blogger Tiffany Yong

 

With 2014 almost ending, I have to say that my year has been fabulous. Normally you will hear familiar things such as having a roller coaster year but if we do end of high note and feel at the present, very likely tend to forget the bad days and sum up the year to be much better than previous year. I haven’t been blogging as I’m currently taking time off for a bit and spending my holidays in Singapore to cap off another awesome year.

So how do I rate my 2014? Honestly it was one of the best years I had in many years. For many reasons but I won’t be sharing all my best moments with you, only some. Maybe the most exciting part for 2014 was able to travel to places like Seoul and Moscow. Well, I didn’t expect to fly to Moscow but Seoul was one of my sought places to travel. I would like to thank you Harley Davidson for bringing me to Seoul for and also to MOE and Bluebox Services for making my Russia trip possible. Where will 2015 bring me? For sure, I have set a date to fly to Manila and guess what? The Philippines is the only ASEAN country that I have yet to travel. Surprise, surprise.

This year, I also truly appreciative of my close friends and my new found ones. It’s true that the closer ones tend to be the most challenging ones because of the level of expectations I have on them. These expectations have been making my relationship with my buddies challenging for many years. Somehow, this year, I feel much lighter than before and I was able to feel much freedom rather than feeling suffocated with my negative thoughts (with having a thought that I’m not enough for them). This year, I’m truly grateful for my strong bonding relationship with my close buddies and you know who you are.

I can’t believe that I actually made it to Moscow, Russia, this year and it was an unexpected journey. This is one of the highlights of 2014 as I hardly travel to Europe and secondly, having a ICI document (passport for Brunei PRs), it will be tricky to travel to European countries.

Since the first picture was taken at Burger King Moscow, let me share with you my favourite snack of 2014 – Burger King’s Taro Pie. Not the one that Gladys is biting but the one on her left hand 😀 Did you know Taro Pie was sold out? But I’m glad it was re-stocked to the delight of Burger King fans.

My other highlight was my Seoul trip back in May 2014. I was happy that Harley Davidson chose me to represent the social media for Brunei. In this picture, Alice and I were at the Trick Eye Museum (adult version) in Seoul.

We had a mini dress up competition at Harley Davidson Headquarters at Seoul. This is the first time I bumped into Malaysian celebrity Michele Lee, a presenter of Football Overload.

One of the reasons I’ve been flying out is for the personal growth workshop sessions I have been attending which has been ongoing for many years. The best part of this journey is rediscovering the strengths in terms of my mental and emotional state. Sometimes you will never know what kind of breakthroughs you will have along the way and I’m blessed to have a great environment around me and mixing with the right crowd too. I’ve never seen the core team so committed with their vision of empowering and making this world a better place to live.

Who would have thought my love for toastmasters grown so immensely after rejoining back as a member after a three year hiatus? Of course, all of this was reignited by my close buddy but along the way, I found my core value within myself as a toastmaster and that is to contribute and be a better leader. People who are not aware will think that toastmasters are just platform for good speakers. It’s more than just that. It’s to nurture and give the members and guests a chance to learn something about public speaking at all levels from beginners to advanced speakers.

Speaking of toastmasters, I’m totally impressed with one of my friends, Amran, who has improved immensely as a speaker and a leader and he is a truly a role model for many. He unexpectedly won also his first Table Topics last week and for someone who was so shy to speak in public last year, we have seen such tremendous change. One of my best highlights of 2014 was my mid-year trip to Kuala Lumpur for the Toastmasters International Convention to witness one of our members of Brunei Speakers’ Club to represent our club and District 87 in the International Speech Contest finals. Awesome!!!!! My aim next year to join the contest for International Speech category. This year, I managed to bag 3rd place in the Speech Evaluation Contest *surprised* while I gained experienced in the Humourous Speech Contest.

For the first time in many years, I enjoyed this year’s summer movies as compared to previous years. From Godzilla to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes to Guardian of the Galaxy and finishing off with one of the biggest blockbuster for Bruneil, Yasmine the movie, locally produced by Origin Films. Yes, I’m a movie buff and my love for movie will hardly fade away. I’m also happy that my podcast movie review has been a success for this year and for those, who have been listening and downloading the podcast, thank you so much. The popular podcasts for The Popcorn Panel for 2014 is Yasmine (almost 1,000 listened), Big Hero 6 (650) and Transformers 4 (580). Because of The Popcorn Panel, you will hardly see a written movie review on my blog. I shall be blogging more on my reviews by next year so you will have two mediums of my actual review of the movies. Overall, a great movie experience for 2014. Do watch out for my Top 10 movies of 2014 early in January 2015.

This year, I met a bunch of new friends during my travels. Though English is a language for them but we still managed to converse. Life is full of unexpected beginnings.

What more can I say? We all cross path back in 2009 and it was always great to look back at older pictures and remind what great friendship I have made with my friends. Though Winnie has left for Penang, the friendship still remains solid.

Toastmasters is another avenue to learn and grow as a leader and also support one another in a conducive environment. These are my toastmasters buddies and this was taken during the Toastmasters International Convention 2014 in Kuala Lumpur. One of the top 3 highlights of my 2014 indeed.

After slacking off in Year 2011 for Toastmasters, I rejoined back in June 2014 and began doing my speeches. This was my third speech manual (CC3) which was entitled “The Art of Showmanship” where I impersonated The Rock and talked about how much of an entertainment WWE (or wrestling) is.

Early in March, I went to Singapore to catch both Hollywood stars starring in The Amazing Spider-man to promote Earth Hour in Singapore. This shows how much I’m a big fan of movies and I even had the privilege to catch a special preview screening of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in Singapore.

My love for WWE might have faded. Maybe because the WWE universe isn’t as exciting as before. My urge to catch RAW on Tuesday also has faded. Regardless of my less interest in WWE, I was more than excited to catch WWE Live in Kuala Lumpur. Ironically I had an invitation to catch John Cena live during a press conference and I’m not much of a John Cena fan. I managed to ask a question to him personally with regards to the title achievement in comparison with Ric Flair. The overall experience was awesome because I finally get up close and personal to a WWE Superstar. The wrestling show itself was full of adrenalin and that is purely due to the engaging crowd at Indoor Stadium. Let’s hope for another WWE in Asia and I won’t mind booking another flight to catch one.

Finally, to finish off a wonderful 2014 is my renovated room which has been so messy and old-school for the past 20 years. I didn’t spend that much on the renovation but more on spending on new furniture such as my single bed (though it has yet to be assembled in my room lol) and I have a new wardrobe area. The only item that hasn’t been completed is the extension of my bedroom to another room (office area). The new feel has made my environment more conducive and I feel so much better that I don’t have the feeling of suffocating and constrained. The extra space in my room does make a difference and I feel much more like home. There are still a few tweaking to do here and there. Other than that, I’m more than happy of my current room. Maybe you can try and renovate your room and see how your energy will be for the next few months. Oh, by the way, I dispelled the rumours that people thought I was gonna get married just because I was renovating my room.

There are many more I wanna share and I shall leave it for here. I won’t be recapping my 2014 in monthly formats but I will be highlighting the happenings in general and how it has impacted the country and myself overall. Thank you for all my friends who have been the change agent in my life. My advice: Always focus on the positive aspect of your journey while those negative ones, well, either you change your perspective of your thoughts or simply ignore the negative (though that’s tough as we are human beings).

Too surreal to be true.. I was only yards away from WWE Superstar John Cena who paid a visit to Kuala Lumpur back in August. Thank you so much for the opportunity though I didn’t like his guts so much but he does have important values such as supporting the breast cancer awareness campaign.

Though my room is incomplete in terms of renovation, the newly look has made me feel much more lighter and I feel more energized whenever I wake up or do my work. So do renovate your room because it can make a difference energy wise and a much more conducive environment.

 

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