The Anti-Camwhore

This post isn't going to make me famous with many, but honestly I couldn't care less. And yeah, some of you are even going to say, wow she's so shallow and so petty. Well screw you, this is my blog and I'll bitch if I want to.



As far as I'm concerned, I was the original camwhore. I had a digital camera (albeit a pretty shit one) way before anyone else. Sometime in 2000. And I had been messing with Photoshop since I was 14 (read: 1997). Yes, everything I know, is self taught.

I joined Friendster in 2003. At first I had a really awesome picture of Devon Aoki as my primary pic. And while everyone had poor-quality scans of their passport/pictures with bad eye exposure, I had already posted up awesome cropped pictures. Ya I knew how to crop, how cool was I. Which then led me to camwhoring. Taking many-many pictures of myself. And way before the advent of America's Next Top Model and having Tyra giving picture-taking advice, I already knew that you needed to take hundreds of pictures of yourself to find a few that really Popped. Of course in time, you would perfect this skill and be able to get THE shot at the first try.

And this was good for awhile, I had fun experimenting..photoshop is by far my favourite program of all time.

Slowly but surely, other camwhores starting sprouting up here and there.

Dude, don't get me wrong. Camwhoring is hecka fun. I get that. And hell some of my friendships even blossomed from our joy of camwhoring and photoshopping.

Honestly though. Camwhoring for the purpose of spawning art or something..well something that has a story or SOMETHING lah..anything substantial is totally fine by me. Til today I still see really good camwhore pictures that have good compositions, good use of colours and so on and I still get blown away. I give credit where credit is due. And I sure as hell can appreciate a good picture.

But wow. A picture for pictures sake?

Do we really need to see 47 different angles of a person in the same outfit, pouting in all different angles, trying her damnest to look cute/sexy/hot? There are porn sites for that, thank you very much.

And I thought I took a lot of pictures. During my time in London, I was always the token Asian with her camera at all times. No one else had theirs, well coz they were too busy enjoying the moment, soaking it all in..not consumed about ok I can't wait to post this up on Facebook tonight when I get home. None of that. To be honest, I would camwhore only before and after I went out, not so much when I was actually out. Likewise when travelling. I would be looking for a goodshot of the people and places as compared to having 20 pictures of me with the same backdrop..to get a good one of me. Bitch please, I look good in all my pictures.

But when I came back to KL, boy was I in for a surprise of the level of camwhoring.

I went out with a bunch of people I had not seen in awhile. The minute they saw me, without even saying Oh Hey how are you, it's been so long..the first thing they did was to call me over to..yep you guessed it..

"TAKE PICTUREEEEE"

so I got in the shot, flashed my pearly whites and click.

"Nono I look grossss in this oneee, take anotherrrr,"

click click.

"Omggg I look so gemukkk in this oneee,"

oh brother. this was gonna be a long night.

so basically this was it. the whole night. the minute i sat down to have a drink,

"hey picture everyyonee,"
"my cameraa pulakkk,"
"mine tooooo!"

And it never stopped. The pace was steady the whole night. No one was spared. Every guy who was unfortunate enough to be standing near the table had had to take pictures of us. Even the bartender. Bless his soul. The best part was when I was asked to take some pictures, first horizontally, vertically, and of course my favourite line,

"Make sure nampak my kasut tau!"

If you need to know, I am rolling my eyes up so hard right now I think it might actually stay that way.

To sum it up, I had no fun whatsoever that night. More than half the time was spent taking a 101 different shots of the same people, the same poses, the same rehearsed 'sexy' dancing.. this shit is acceptable when you are a gung-ho 18 year-old in the clubs looking to get freaky with the regular club-hottie lah.

At that night, I missed my buddies in London like hell. Hana and her crazy no-rules dancing. I remembered dancing and rocking it out everytime Veron and I got together. Even Toshi was hilarious in her own way. All of THAT was fun.

Not being a resident poser.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting old and crabby.


Crabby or not, it's good to know that I'm no longer stuck in a bubble.

Um..Happy New Year?

Alright, so i'm a little bit behind time. Four months late to be exact. Have I been wanting to blog? Yes, very much so. Unfortunately, time has not been a friend to me..and I'm finding that I need more than 24 hours in a day.

So Happy New Year, Gong Hei Fatt Choy, Happy Thaipusam, Selamat Maulud Nabi and all that jazz. Now that we're done with the "formalities", let's get this show on the road then.

Last night I had the weirdest dream. Here's what I recall.

I was watching the Travel & Living channel with my mom. It was on Rome, that Samantha Brown show. My mom started getting upset, she said she tossed a coin at Trevi Fountain and apparently if you do this, it means you will one day return to Rome. But of course she never went back and she kept saying how it was now too late coz she was too old.

So I took her there (yes coz in my dream, I have all the dream money one could possibly have), she was happy, so forth and so on.

That's all I remembered from there. The strange thing was, after this dream.. I was in that blurred line between being asleep and on the verge of being awake.

Do you guys ever notice that sometimes, when you're really tired and just as you are about to fall alseep.. you make sounds, beyond your control? like you'll be sleeping and suddenly you make an 'ugh' sound and you know you made it, but you didn't do it consciously?

well okay, in that stage of in-betweeness, i heard a voice say 'Hey'. And I knew it wasn't me. well it didn't sound like it came from me. I was lying on my side, and the voice came from behind me. but I was too tired, I thought okay it had to come from me..and I just sort of dozed off again..but my conscience was telling me that something horribly wrong must be happening.

And then it led me to thinking that something must've happened to my mom. My mom must've died in her sleep. That's why I had the weird dream about her saying it was too late to see Rome. That 'Hey' I heard must've been my mom's spirit trying to wake me up to go check up on her body coz everyone was sleeping still.

I know this sounds absurd now, but it all felt very real as it was happening. I started to feel so upset that I woke up, got out of my room and went to her room..but the bed was empty. I rushed to the kitchen, and let out a huge sigh of relief..

..she was pottering about the kitchen as she always does, making herself a cup of tea. Alhamdulillah.


Dreams.


I'll never understand them..