Tokyo, Japan Trip 8.0

Morning everyone ! Christmas holiday week has just over, coming back to KL yesterday night with an unwilling mood. I just done my psychology quiz at my hostel couples of minutes ago ! Yeap, you didn't read wrongly, it's at my HOSTEL. This is the first time doing quiz outside the campus, actually it's even more nervous doing quiz at home than in campus as you don't know that if anything will happen or line not stable. We can even choose the time slot ourselves as there's another time slot available on Friday if you can't make it today. What an open-minded lecturer, Mr.Alex is the best lecturer ever ! 

Okay, forget about the test now, coming to the year end of 2014, this might be my last post in this year but still not my last post for my Japan trip. Time has been flies faster year by year, 2014 is a colorful year for me especially in my university life, we have gone crazier and crazier as higher semesters. However, I still have lots of things undo yet in this year and had to carry forward continue in the next year, yeap I’m saying about all the assignments and reports. Most probably I’ll be countdown-ing with my assignments just like how I spent my Christmas last week. Such a pity student life. Hope everything can end soon so that I can cope with my coming exam. However, 2014 is not a good year for the world especially our country, air planes tragedy, flood, too many sad incidents happen this year. Well, there’s another heartbreaking news just happened yesterday. One more air plane missing again yesterday, hope all the passengers and crews on board are safe, pray hard for them. Last but not least, I just wish that 2015 will be a better year than 2014 as no more tragedy happen in the world.

 

# DAY 8 #

After a good rest yesterday, today we are heading to Tokyo Disneyland at Orayasu the purpose we came to Tokyo. Well, actually I’m not so much interested in Disney characters as that is not the family of Hello Kitty belongs to, perhaps I should go to Sanrio Town next time ! We decided to use Japan-Rail travel to our destination which is much more cheaper but requires lots of walking and stations changing. Okay, I’ll take it as exercises which is good for our health ^^ So, this begin our Disneyland one day self trip … Here we go !!!

Goodbye Hokkaido Hello Tokyo 7.0

Happy Winter Solstice and Merry Christmas everyone ! Just attend two Christmas parties this year before back to my hometown. I’m having my one week year-end holiday now, but hoilday = no holiday. Lots of assignments and presentations still due for me, how I wish I could enjoy and have a good rest during this holiday, but I can’t ! This semester is much shorter than the previous one, exam is coming in less than one month time and I haven’t start to prepare it at all, feeling so stress now… But this is so call university life isn’t it, we have fun time as well as hard time, play as much as we can, study as hard as we could !

 

# DAY 7 #

Time has come to the last day of our trip in Hokkaido before we heading to self-travel in Tokyo. I miss every single day spending here with our lovely tour mates and also every delicious meal, perhaps we can eat something good in Tokyo too as we know that the living standard there is much higher therefore if want to have better meal there could be much expensive. But it’s time to try some Japanese famous bendol and ramen too !  

Hokkaido, Japan Trip 6.0

Hi everyone! Time has comes to the last month of the year. December will always be my favourite month because Christmas is just around the corner and I’m already feeling so excited to the coming parties! Well, this is the first time I’ll celebrate Christmas with my university friends and we plan to exchange gifts with the theme secret santa. Feeling so curious who is my guardian angel, please treat me well yea ^^ Anyway, finally we had done with 3 tests, 1 practical exam and silent drama two weeks ago. I still survive !!! Kinda be relax a little and enjoy my uni life, my schedule was full of activities after the exams (few more blog posts to due). We WORK HARD but PLAY even HARDER! But wait, another hectic timetable is coming. 1 group assignment, 1 individual assignment, 1 report, 1 test and 2 presentations are due for me currently. I’m so stressful now and have no idea how to deal with them. Sometimes, I wish I could just let go of everything, blank all my minds and have a good rest, but I can’t. That’s why I relax myself for a while today to write this blog post, throwback myself to the wonderful moment when I was in Japan.

 

# DAY 6 #

It’s already two and a half month I back from Japan and I not yet done with all my blog posts for it. A little good things for you readers is that there’ll be less photos in this post as I know some of you might feeling annoying to scroll my super long blog posts with overload of pictures. Sorry for that but I just want to share all my beautiful memories with you guys here. Coming to Day 6 of the trip and this will be out last day spend in Sapporo city before moving on to the next journey. Today’s highlight is definitely for shop lover like me before leaving this beautiful place !  

Hokkaido, Japan Trip 5.0

Konichiwa! Finally finished watermarking all these 200+ photos in this post, it was absolutely a super tiring job for me, but yes I finally did it bits by bits, feeling so relieved now but there are still more posts queuing up for me. Days have come to the 5th week of my Sem 3, after joining some activities for the first few weeks, school workloads are becoming heavier and heavier, stressful mind just couldn’t get off from me recently, but yet I know that this semester will be an interesting one compared to last semester for sure. I quitted all the dramas, youtube-ing, even my favourite Running Man, and now left the only hobby for me is blogging. It had been more than a month I back from my Japan trip, but still I miss everything there, every moment spent with my family there is so precious to me, I wish I could travelled back in time if I have time machine …

 

# DAY 5 #

Enough for countryside, today we are going to discover the beauty of capital city of Hokkaido! Sapporo is the largest city on the island, also one of the newest and prettiest in Japan. Although it is far smaller than Tokyo, Sapporo is vibrant and colorful, and even if it lacks the traditional architecture of older cities, its wide open and tree lined streets are lovely in summer and winter as well. We’re going to visit some of the significant attractions of Sapporo today such as the famous Otaru canal, Sakaimachi Street, lovely Ishiya Chocolate factory, Tanukikoji shopping street and many more. But before that, we’ll also pass by Asahikawa which is the 2nd biggest city of Hokkaido and is the semi industrial cum agriculture land scalping zone. Wow! Finally have chance to visit there where always shown in the travel variety shows. Just can’t wait for it! Sapporo, here we come !

Hokkaido, Japan Trip 4.0

Aloha followers! I’m back with this post after one week time. Kinda busy with schools’ events in this past few weeks that caused the delays of my posts. Will surely update more about that in my blog later on. Today is Deepavali and a public holiday here, so have some time to blog on. Actually writing post didn’t require much of time for me since my photos are usually more than words but not for watermarking the photos. Still wondering is there any free and faster method to watermark them without changing the quality of images instead of one by one using meitu apps? If do, please comment me  the easier way of doing this. Anyway, thanks again for continuing reading my posts here and wish all the Indian friends a Happy Deepavali !

 

# DAY 4 #

Konichiwa! It’s still having a good weather today. If let’s said yesterday was a fruity/flowery day, then today will be an ocean/nature day for me. We travel through the costal line at the eastern-north and today we’re going to discover the nature beauty of Mombetsu city!

Mombetsu, the third largest city in Hokkaido located in north-east of Hokkaido, the northern most area of Japan (facing the Sea of Okhotsk). The harbors are important not only to Hokkaido but also to Japan. Its harbors are surrounded by gently sloping mountains and farm lands cover the region.

Hokkaido, Japan Trip 3.0

Hey there and Happy Weekend to you! I know this post is coming a little late due to my first week of SEM3 was just started few days ago and we had class since early morning to evening everyday, I had so much things to deal with so only had limited time left to watermark those photos and write this post. So continuing the last post, this post will be the third exciting day of my trip! Let’s move on to the land of nature in details with me!

 

# DAY 3 #

On the third day of our trip, the highlight of today will be fruit farm discovery and flower garden visit after the lakes and mountain adventures yesterday. Among of the photos taken, I love today’s photos the most because it was a bright clear blue sky and amazing sunshine day! However, having some symptoms of sore throat, fever and dizziness since morning made me feeling not so well throughout the day until I had some medicines to fight against the virus in my body.

Hokkaido, Japan Trip 2.0

Hey lovelies, it’s me again! Sorry for the delayed of my second post of the trip. Watermark hundreds of photos one by one is not an easy job at all! Anyway, today I’m going to write about the second day of my Japan trip which is also the first day of landing in Hokkaido! Let’s take a tour with me to discover this beautiful land of nature!

P/S: Some photos resolution changed due to upload indirectly via Windows Live Writer.

 

# DAY 2 #

Morning everyone!　It’s 7am in Osaka which in only 6am in Malaysia now. The weather here is sunny and the sky looks pretty bright today. Just hope that the weather will be this good throughout the day. We are now leaving this second biggest city of Japan, Osaka and heading to the local airport for the morning flight to Northern region, Hokkaido. According to the tour guide, SHIN-OSAKA STATION can be consider as a famous landmark in Osaka.

Hokkaido, Japan Trip 1.0

Konichiwa! Yes, I’m just back from my 10 days 9 nights Japan Trip last week. It has been a wonderful and memorable family trip for me but can’t denied that travelling for 10 days was absolutely tiring. Just before the night before we began our journey, there’s was a sudden emergency warnings issued of intense rainfall and relentless line of thunderstorms in the city, Sapporo which causes flood and landslides, almost 300,000 residents evacuate their homes and flights had been affected in Chitose Airport. We were so worried that it might affect our trip, but luckily we went to the countryside first before the city so our trip was not affected. And we were so lucky that were able to leave before earthquake may happen in Tokyo according to their news. Thanks god that everything went on smoothly throughout this 10 days.

Due to the period of changing season, weather in Hokkaido was pretty cool with windy and rainy day sometimes compared to the hot sunny weather in Tokyo. However due to that, I got sore throat and flu on the second day of the trip and until now I still haven’t fully recover yet. It took me rest at home for one week after back from the trip to recover my energy. Just before the end of my holidays, I arranged all the photos taken during the trip and surprisingly I’ve took over 3000 of photos. It took me some time to select and choose some of it to be blog on because it was impossible for me to blog them all. Due to long post and photos, I’m going to blog on my trip day by day. So, let’s begin the journey with me, here you go …  

 

# DAY 1 #

My Sony A5000

Thinking of what type & brand of camera should I bought recently, DSLR or compact camera ? Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Sony ?? Although I love photography but I’m not sure which brand is better and which model is more suitable for me. Searching and compare between the brands online and Youtube-ING , with all types of models, they really makes me confused for some time. For me, holding a bulky DSLR for long hours especially while travelling can be very exhausting and troublesome. So I prefer a light compact camera with DSLR quality convenient for me to carry around, with NFC/WIFI function, either stylish/retro design and the most importantly affordable price. With all these conditions, and finally I found a perfect alternative to DSLR, Sony A5000 just fit all the conditions I wanted ! It’s you destine to be mine !

So, just the day before the Hari Merdeka promotion ended, I carried back my darling and playing around during my holiday. Just realize I’m just LOVE photography but don’t know HOW to photography. This is my first time handling a interchangeable lens camera. Photography becoming a ‘big knowledge’ for me with all the ‘alien language’. Should start to learn hard by now before become a pro photographer for my coming trip.

Reading some reviews from a few bloggers just knowing that this is quite a perfect camera for bloggers, especially for girls. This model is available in 3 colors, black, white and pink. At first I was attracted by the beautiful white color but after think twice and decided to take the black one as the white one is too difficult to take care of it. A5000 can be consider as the new generation of NEX series. But this is not the latest models which is the A5100. Due to the my budget, so I just give up that one.

Sony Alpha 5000 is the world’s lightest interchangeable-lens digital camera weighs only 210g without lens and battery, and 269g with battery and kit lens. But inside this very portable camera is a 20.1 effective-megapixel APS-C image sensor for superb DSLR image quality. It is pretty light and convenient to carry around,  and best of all I don’t need to bring a large camera bag. It also equipped with a 180 degrees tiltable LCD screen for easy selfies, and Wi-Fi and NFC capabilities, for easy transfer or photos to my smartphone using the Play Memories app which is free for both iPhone and Android. This makes capturing and sharing photos really fun and most importantly - easy!

The basic set comes in a Sony Alpha 5000 body and E-mount 16-50mm kit lens f/3.5-5.6.

  Never realize I’m such a ‘super’ Sony fans … My 3rd Sony’s camera

As usual, there are a few modes in this camera such as intelligent auto, superior auto, scene selection, manual exposure, shutter priority, aperture priority, program auto, sweep  panorama and others. But the specialty of this camera is on the photo effects. There are quite a few to choose from: Toy Camera, Pop Color, Posterization, Retro, Soft High-key, Partial Color, High Contrast Mono, Soft Focus, HDR Painting, Rich-tone Mono, Miniature, Watercolor & Illustration. I just mostly used with Superior Auto mode to shoot where could adjust the brightness, the amount of background defocus, colour temperature and colour vividness. This is great when you don’t have time to manually set the ISO/shutter speed/aperture.  However I’m hoping to improve, and I’ve read up a little online how to properly set up with ISO, shutter speed and aperture... So I'm slowly but surely learning how to fully utilise the camera!

Here are some photos shooting in my home garden. I prefer using the background defocus effect with manual focus in intelligent auto/aperture mode which softens the background and makes the subject of the photo more prominent rather than macro mode.

Just a normal keyboard can be so much different with this cameraBackground DefocusRetro EffectToy Camera EffectRich-Tone Mono EffectHigh Illustration Effect

 

So that’s all my reviews on this Sony A5000. Can’t really show you much photos other than that because there’s really nothing much to capture at my home here. Should try shooting at some night scene or sunset next time. I pretty sure that it will give me a surprising effect too.  I’m quite satisfied with this camera but not my photography skills. Give me some more time and I’ll surely discover more on its features. Few more days I’ll be off for my family Japan Trip, can’t stop looking forward to the shooting for my blog, will surely bring back lots of beautiful pics for u, see u then and hope you have a nice day ! ^^

 

LaraChin♥

Food Preparation Lab

In our semester 2, we have a interesting module called principle of food preparation. As a dietetics student, understand the principle of science behind food is so much important to us. There is a interesting session in this module which we have to prepare the food ourselves with discussion and presentation after the cooking session. Many others might think that we were so fun to play around in the kitchen, but honestly speaking, it was great during the cooking session but not after that as bitter come after the sweet, we still have to submit reports after every session. We were divided into groups and each group prepare foods with different ingredients or cooking method. It was more to be explain as food experiment than cooking class.

 

# FISRT LAB SESSION #

Let us took some selfies before the first lab !We’re pretty chefs ^^This is our clean and tidy ND Lab

 

# BAKING SESSIONS #

Baking self-raising butter cake in our first lab, this reminded me my first time baking cake during the ERT class in my secondary school time …

Zzang Zzang !!!

other group preparing potatoes with different cooking method

Guess what’s this ?They are gluten balls ! Looks cute right ? ^^Discussion & Presentation TimeCarrot Muffinsothers group of raisin muffinmy group of carrot muffinCan you guess what are we doing？Yes! We are making cream puffs !!!First time making cream puffs, soft but crispy, taste good !Zzang Zzang ! Cream puffs with lemon filling ♥Anyone wants to buy our cream puffs ?our first loaf of bread with a stone-like textureYeah! cookies time !!!Sorry we didn’t follow the recipes but added with lots of chocolate chips & walnuts ^^Sugar cake with the 100% sugary taste O-OPastries baking Delicious chicken pie

 

# MILK TASTING SESSION #

We were asked to taste the difference of various types of milk : fresh milk, skim milk, full cream milk, chocolate milk, soy milk, carbonated milk, almond milk, rice milk and even evaporated cream milk … my mouth was filled with all types of awful milk tastes O.O

 

# COOKING SESSIONS #

Finally saying goodbye to baking sessions and welcome our cooking sessions

♥ SEAFOOD LOVER ♥

Our theme today – SEAFOODS !

♥ MEAT LOVER ♥

Could you see the fats dripping from the meats ?!

♥ VEGIE LOVER ♥

♥ SOUPS & THICKENERS ♥

Our potato soup with the texture like mashed potato but tasty !

 

# BEHIND THE SECNES #

 

# PHOTO SESSION #

Here are my lovely group 10 members and one of our cute lecturer – Ms. SangeethaAnd so this group selfie ended our last food prep lab session !

 

LaraChin♥