'K' Stands for KUNDASANG! Part I

Hello readers! Another post about my trip with friends but this time free from all rules and lecturer! Ha~ Okay, here's the story...

Date:
18th - 19th December 2010

Place:
Kundasang, Desa Farm, Kundasang War Memorial, Hot Spring

Trip's members:
Esther Donny, Judy Bea Wong(Judy), Georgianne George (Jojo), Sharon Lentz, Azmi, Gary Ting Kha King (Ting), Noralawaiyah (Mala), Fransisca Robert, Gerard Jerome (J.j), Siti Fatimah (Fatim), Siti Sahara (sara), Al-Nasdin ( Nash)

Dec 18th Day of the trip
Really a "blockbuster" trip for me coz it was my first time having a trip to Kundasang with my twins and all my friends. Well to be honest, me and my twin ever did a trip to Kundasang. Yup not even with our family as financial crisis always landed in our family.
Okay, first thing me and my twins do was ....of course waiting for others to come but since we come at 5:30am in the morning, we went to coffeeshop nearby and have a little hot drinks and talk about what we're going to do when we reach our destination. The departure time for this trip was actually at 7:30am but turned out that after waiting the others to come ( who's late...) we finally depart at 9:30am. Great! What a waste of time.

There's only about 13 people going to this trip which include the 2 of us. We're really excited as the scenery was really amazing! So all the remaining hour inside the van we busy admiring the beauty of nature and have fun moment together. The bus driver told us that Mount Kinabalu has it own uniqueness, legends and superstitious. He said that the early Kadazan/Dusun also used to believe that when a person dies, the soul will go up to Mount Kinabalu for R.I.P. It is therefore advisable that whenever one wants to climb the mountain, an offering must be made to the ‘pogigion’ or those dwellers around Kinabalu or something bad will befall on you ( Hmm...really?). I don't know about that but my mom used to told me not to say anything about going up there because the sprit would come to know of my intention and something terrible might happen.
“When you are climbing,” she said, “You must walk silently. Do not pluck anything or those dwellers will follow you home and make you sick”.
( mom used to climb the mmountain too)

My friend, Nash ( Al-Nasdin) were an international student ( from Philipines) was really excited after hearing about the tradition in Sabah, well since this was his first time too! Well I'm not really believe in superstitious or such but sometimes it's really attach to your way of living....sort of Karma I guest. So we stop for a while in Pekan Nabalu for short break and anyone who wish for photoshoot are welcome here.

First destination Poring Hot Spring which located approximately 47KM away from Kinabalu National Park passing through Kundasang and Ranau and guest what...the name Poring, stands for the tall bamboo plant that is abundant in that area. Whoa! Well since it's holiday, the place was really crowded with kids, tourist and of course teens like me....God, Save me!
What I don't like about that place during the were some old men with a bunch of kids who act like as if they were single again. Yikes! And a Korean mom yelling at her children which I think " poor kid". Some of our friends ( Judy and Esther)went for a swim, Gary Ting and Nash....I don't know where they going, Jojo, Lentz, and Azmi ...well eating lunch I guest. And lastly me and my twins with other 3 friends ( Mala, Fransisca, and Gerard) went to stroll the entire area of swimming pool.( Google the place you know the swimming area was not the kind that you got at home.
We manage take a few photo's

Well I can say was the first destination was not really a great place but pretty amazing though.

.....
Are you there? Okay.

On our next trip to 2nd destination, we stop by at a small market near Ranau to buy some goodies for us. And by goodies I mean food for vegan and non-vegan. So fresh and delicious too. Oh did I mention that we went there by using 2 van instead of 1? Yup, now you know.
Alright, another pit stops for us was near the Kundasang War Memorial ....we had to wait for another 6. While we wait, I notice that the place was getting colder and colder but the scenery was really great. And better I tell you! So many pine tree grew over here which are rare in South East Asia.15 minutes of waiting finally they arrived. Then my friend, Mala suggest that we better go to top of the hill where there's another tourist attraction which are the Desa Dairy Farm Kundasang. I was like ....WHAT!! But this place really a great place and I myself recommend you guys readers to go there if you have some time.


Desa Dairy Farm - the largest in Sabah with an area of 199 hectares, is located at the Mesilau Plateau, Kundasang about 30 minutes drive from Mt.Kinabalu National Park. The green meadows stretching all over the area was so refreshing at 2100 meters above sea level. We arrived just in time for the milking process. Hundreds of cows were rounded up for milking.

It was amazing that to see cows lining up or rather queuing up to the milking station without being guided. They knew exactly what to do!
And for the record, not just cows, but you also can see horses in here too!

My friends bought a few packages of this milk for home

Yes of course we take some picture of us

That's all of us hehehe

Look at those cows at the back...HA! they surely had good time too!

After a good long hours in Desa Dairy Farm and a few photos, we went back down the hill and directly toward the 3rd stop in our trip which are and finally the Kundasang War Memorial. The Kundasang War memorial was split into 4 garden - the Australian Garden, the English Garden, the Borneo Garden and the Contemplation Garden Pool.

Check it out!

Joyful moment

Before I continue, please grab some snack and drinks and enjoy the post. During the day we had so much fun, everyone was tired, so we went to our place of stay which are D'Villa Rina Ria Lodge, Kinabalu Park ~ Kundasang...That place was really COLD!! Okay I'm a girl who live in a tropic country and going to somewhere cold really doesn't suits me well...(Mommyyyy...) Ngeh...guest no choice after all.

Same room with my twins sister, we're very lucky our bed are much bigger than the 3 of our friends..hehehehe
Dinners was prepared by our friend Gary Ting, who handles all the chicken and sausages helped by Azmi, hmm...loyal friends I guest. Poor Gary Ting that he had to face the heat as well.
Ha ~ when everybody was preparing for dinner, suddenly our lecturer a.k.a friend pop out in the middle of us and I was really suprised when I look at him. They said he's been cycling from K.K to Kundasang. WHOA!!
And yes we had dinner together, jokes, drinks, and everything... really fun though. Usually the only entertainment for me was reading books and singing inside my bedroom but actually it take more than that. Thanks to all my friends. Joy moment will not last forever but the memories surely does. Me and my twins went to bed at 1:30am in the morning.

Continue in Part II

Christmas is just around the corner.

Christmas is just around the corner, and we tend to sometimes get a little carried away with all the hustle and bustle of the holidays; the shopping, the cooking, the baking, the decorations, the company, etc… It’s so easy to forget just what this holiday is supposed to mean, and we become, dare I say, super self involved at a time when we should really be thinking of all those around us and to just be enjoying the magic of Christmas.



Hello readers! Hope you guys have a nice weekdays ( or not). . It didn’t bother me at first because I had just started my day, and I was sure that I’d have a good one . Can you feel it too? Hmm...yes I know. After seeing people wondering around the street and do some nice Christmas shopping and after having listened to endless screaming children who kept running around the mall bumping into people...Argh...why you little ...Opps. Ehem, well back to the topic, 24 days til Christmas holiday and I'm now wondering how people around going to celebrate this huge occasion. Starting to get some Christmas tree perhaps?



Ha I still remember when I was a little kid I saw a boys ( maybe he's around my age for now)going up to these two people who were dressed up as elves, and they shyly asked the elves if they could take a picture with them( ngeh). The elves smiled, knelt down and took pictures with them and talked to them, all the while laughing, and I thought, okay, so maybe Christmas wasn't all about screaming kids or such.




So what have I learned ? A good and successful Christmas isn’t about throwing the best party, buying all the items on your Christmas list, or shoving and pushing past people to get to the head of the line in the store, but appreciating the smaller moments and nuances of Christmas and absorbing all those tiny little sweet and kind gestures that are happening all around you.



You only get to feel the magic of Christmas once a year ( NOOOO ).... So bask in it. Love it, and don’t let anything, mishaps or otherwise, ruin the best time of the year for you , because if you do, you’re going to have to wait a whole entire year, that’s 12 months, 365 days, or 525 948.766 minutes (depending on how you want to look at it), before it comes around again.



So....HO HO HO Merry Christmas and best wishes to all



P.S Pss...listening to Christmas song really do me a favor though....

The Wedding's ~

Hello readers, Last Saturday, I went to my friends wedding where it was really quite nice wedding event for me though! We went there by walking while my friends wedding location sort like 5 meter away from my house ...well yeah pretty near, don't you think? Oh and yes 'we' refers to me and my sister sarara actually went there.

Well the wedding supposed to started at 5.00PM afternoon but we came early at 4PM just to greet the bride. And they was realy shock hehehe. Ah ~~ they look beautiful and happy. A sincere smile shone over both bride and brideroom. Well both were also my friends which are Abigail Clarence and Malcom Marwill. They make a sweet couple since last year. Whoa!! I myself can't believe their love last long til the great day has come. So sweet...

The wedding itself really are nice and fab. Well I'm not a kind of person who loves to go wedding or any sort of occassion because to me wedding was not really a special event but this time I may had to change my perspective a little bit about wedding. During the wedding, everyone was there to celebrate the amazing afternoon with each other. God blessed us all because that day was damn rain cats and dogs but fortunately it stop before the wedding had started.

But we don't stay for long because we're very busy that day. So we went to see the bride and take a few picture together and wish them good luck and all the best. The part during this event, everyone seems so happy ( well some other don't when I look at them...ngeh) the parents had no choice but smiling...opps! Well the bride was actually a preggers but hey... that doesn't stop them from live a happy life and being good parent, right? That normal and you know it! Beside a purple dress were also suit the bride. Yup the theme color for their wedding was light purple and I thought all of the family was wearing purple in color because I was wearing creamy peach color shirt and my sister dark moron long-sleeves shirt.

The food was nice too...well a bunch of old lady that I don't even who their are asking me whose actually cook all the dishes. Well as usual I just answer " I'm sorry, I don't know" which I think sometimes annoying if people asking something that I don't even know. Hm... I just had few word words to say for both bride .....well you never know the biggest day of your life is the biggest day. Not until it's happening. You don't recognize the biggest day of your life, not until you're right in the middle of it. The day you commit to something or someone. The day you get your heart broken. The day you meet your soul mate. The day you realize there's not enough time, because you wanna live forever. Those are the biggest days. The perfect days. You know?


Hey I didn't bring your wedding gift that day.... I'll just give it to you guys...SOON!

P.S In case you don't mind, are the red color drink were really WINE?

Music

"Music is an escape for me its way to express how you feel...........Imagine life without music.
There would no songs we could connect to. No songs that would remind us of someone special. The songs that makes us cries because it remind us of someone you lost. I can name a few songs that make me cry right now..........nothings wrong with that. If you never cried over a song....you're dead inside" - Patrick Pryor

French Composer : Claude Debussy

Born: August 22, 1862. St. Germaine-en-Laye, France
Died: March 5, 1918. Paris, France


In his own words...

"A symphony is usually built on a melody heard by the composer as a child. The first section is the customary presentation of a theme on which the composer proposes to work; then begins the necessary dismemberment; the second section seems to take place in an experimental laboratory; the third section cheers up a little in a quite childish way, interspersed with deep sentimental phrases during which the melody recedes, as is more seemly; but it reappears and the dismemberment goes on... I am more and more convinced that music is not, in essence, a thing which can be cast into a traditional and fixed form. It is made up of colors and rhythms."

French composer and critic. Debussy's music is often associated with the contemporary impressionist movement in painting, and his approach shares some characteristics of this style.

"The primary aim of French music," Claude Debussy wrote in 1904, "is to give pleasure." Debussy, more than anything, was interested in the sensuous quality of music. Even as a student he let his concept of sound override many of the rules he was so assiduously taught by his teachers (much to their consternation). From this he developed a style that was wholly his own, but that also owed much to a wide variety of disparate influences. He also was a passionate champion of a purely French style, and he proudly referred to himself as "Claude Debussy, musicien français."

Debussy was educated at the Paris Conservatory, and in 1885 he won the coveted Prix de Rome. His period in Rome, however, was not pleasant for Debussy and he longed to return to Paris. His early works show his desire to break the constraints of Western harmony and form (he especially disliked sonata-allegro form, which he came to see as overly Germanic and not fitting for a French composer). His Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun departs from any sense of development, relying instead on a series of free repetitions and variations of the basic themes.

As a student and a young composer, Debussy was also an ardent Wagnerite, seeing in the German composer the future of music, specifically musical drama. He later turned away from Wagner, describing him as "a beautiful sunset mistaken for a dawn." Yet his one completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, owes much of its conception to this influence, even if the musical language is markedly different. The other strong influences on Debussy at this time were the symbolist and decadent movements in poetry, with their concern for sound and abstract meaning. While Pelléas was his only opera, he worked on various subjects by Edgar Allan Poe, one of his favorite writers and a strong influence on the symbolist writers.

Debussy's interest in the exquisite and sensual also led him to an appreciation of the music of other cultures, and his use of various scales beyond the traditional major and minor ones shows the influence of Oriental and Russian music. A decisive influence was the Paris Exhibition of 1889, where he first encountered the music of the Indonesian gamelan orchestra. The different scales, as well as the floating qualities of form and rhythm, would find their way into his work, especially his piano music.

Late in his life, Debussy turned his interests to abstract forms, producing three remarkable sonatas (he had originally conceived of six for various instruments, with the final one planned for all the instruments of the previous five). In these works, Debussy's rich melodic and harmonic language found a new and intriguing expression. Sadly, this endeavor was cut short by the composer's death at the height of World War I. The conflict of German and French civilization was for him a violent reflection of the musical conflict he dealt with his entire life.

Works:

* Orchestral music, including Prelude à L'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun, 1894), Nocturnes (1899), La Mer (The Sea, 1905), Images (1912), incidental music
* Dramatic works, including the opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) and the ballet Jeux (Games, 1913)
* Chamber music, including a string quartet (1893) and various sonatas (cello, 1915; violin, 1917; flute, viola and harp, 1915)
* Piano music, including Pour le piano (For the Piano, 1901), Estampes (Prints, 1903), 2 books of preludes (1909-1910, 1912-1913)
* Songs and choral music; cantatas, including L'enfant prodigue (The Prodigal Son, 1884



source
http://www.essentialsofmusic.com/composer/debussy.html