KL with my Divas-slash-Bonita & Jillina's Workshop

A much anticipated trip!!!

Date of departure: 16th August 2008
Date of arrival: wee hours of 20th August 2008
Mode of transport: Nancy's husband's car
The group: Me
Anita Sebastian
Jasmine Kang (Jas)
Nancy Zhu (Nan)
Jieting Chen (JT)
Designated Drivers: Jas & JT
Designated Navigator/ treasurer: Me

With excitement, we took off! Jas took to the wheel first and man, she speeds! She was travelling so fast at 160km/hr that I was wondering why the truck two lanes away was staying still in that lane and not moving at all on the highway? And then I realised that the truck was actually crawling at half our speed.. we were too fast! That's why it seemed that the truck was not moving at all. SCARY!!!

When me & Jas got bored entertaining each other in the front seats, I turned around and snapped pictures of the babies sleeping comfortably behind - Nan, JT & Anita.
Haha. Oh and all 5 of us carry Naraya bags. It's huge enough to lug our barangs during our gigs and thus, most certainly large enough for our KL trip.

We reached our destination in record time. The hotel's real disappointing so I shan't waste my energy to even type out our unbelievable frustrations. The ONLY redeeming factor is that the hotel's very near to our workshop location.

Workshop starts only on Monday, sooooo we had loads of free time on our hands! The whole weekend in fact... to wine and dine and SHOP and SHOP. And shop. And shop. And shop. And shop. Shop shop shop shop shop shop shop shop shop shop shop shop shop shop shop shop shop.

(Oi, I not stew-pid, can copy and paste instead of type repeatedly)

That night, we went to this atas restaurant/ bar. The decor's really impressive: well-stocked bar counter, plushy couches, koi pond, lovely staircase.

One embarassing detail: Jas and me got ourselves 'trapped' inside the toilet cubicles side by side - we almost screamed for help when Jas striked upon this brilliant idea that hey, we should push the cubicle door instead of pulling it. MY! That was utterly bimbo.

When it comes to food, we abandoned all pretense and dug into our food heartily.


I was constantly hungry, and hence constantly searching for food. The indian coffeeshop a couple of metres away from our hotel became me and Anita's nightly haunts and to fix our milo addiction. Their 'nasi goreng USA' is the best! Oily, frangrant and totally appropriate!

Towards the end of our stay, we decided to do personal maintainence - hair treatment & mani-pedi. The treatment costs $38 and mani-pedi $32... Good hor. I was showing off my nails in the below picture while midway through the pedicure.
The salon guy impressed me... he had a male client sitting beside me and the end result looked like some of the Taiwanese young male stars. Time-consuming though, first I saw him doing a light perm, then he cut a bit here and there. And after some styling, his hair's atas! Wah, so tv stars actually had to sit for hours. Or maybe not. Since they are popular stars, they sit on diamond-studded chairs with fluffy slippers while sipping hot exotic tea and exchanging tips on who's the best plastic surgeon in town. My,.... nasty!



We chanced upon this accessories store by the name of 'BONITA'. This was the name we call ourselves during the competition last year.


On to our workshop at KL PAC:

18th Aug 08

Jillina is larger than life! She's like the Jamie Oliver of cooking, John Clang of photography, Tiger Woods of golfing, Ian Wright/ Samantha Brown of travel programmes... you get the drift.

Her techniques are precise and strong; her pace of teaching well-controlled; she encourages free styling to adapt the choreo to fit one's performance and she takes a holistic approach to dancing - Why one wants to dance in the first place, to be grateful for health, never take things for granted, to give love and receive love... Beautiful.

The 2-hour session was intensive with yoga style warm-ups, techniques, combination and finally a drum routine. Jillina is such an experienced teacher that she accomplished a lot during 2 hours. To aid memory, she pre-typed the steps and handed out to us - save us the stress of trying to recall blindly when all we could do at the moment was to try to follow and keep up.

And to be fair, she often rotates those standing at the back to the front and those at the front to the back of the studio so that everybody had the chance to learn effectively.

Haiz.... I wish I am half as good as her! She's awesome when she dances; good stage presence.

Footnote: PAC stands for performing arts centre, ridiculously gigantic - from the gate to the studio is a 5-minute drive through its gardens. There were another 5 S'poreans among the class of 30. One of them happened to be my friend's girlfriend. How cute! She self-introduced and informed that her bf showed her my FB profile pic; she wasn't sure it was me as my face's covered except for my eyes.

19th Aug 08

We rushed there at 4.45pm. For 2 hours of techniques plus combinations. She made us repeat until we could do it with eyes closed before moving on to set 2. Set 2 was a killer. Many turns, turn 1.5 round to face the clock behind then turn 1.5 round to face the front then camel 2x (or isit hip twist) and then step to R and turn 1 round face L and then step to L and turn 1 round face R and twist again.

In total, there were about 5 sets. At the end of the 5th set, I had no idea what I had done in set 1, 2, 3 or 4. Jillina's relentless drilling was merciless - but her theory's that it improves muscle memory. TEACHER IS ALWAYS RIGHT OKIE???!!!

After a 45minutes break, the second fusion session started.

This was the TOUGH part. By the end of the first hour, we felt the strain. Our eyes were glazed and our brains simply cannot retain information. I still remembered thinking to myself: Wa! another 2 more hours how to tahan?

This is when Jillina's theory of muscle memory works. Truly when one is so exhausted from repeatedly going through the motions, somehow when the music starts, the body regurgitates out all the previous steps without having the need to tap on your brain cell reservoir. This is true for most part of the choreo because no matter what, all these were new to us... there's bound to be moments where we freeze, forgetting what's the next step.

All throughout the 5 hours of hard-core dancing, I never see Jillina's energy level going down one bit. 神呀！
Although Jillina's more heavily built than me, I looked so fat beside her??? And I duno how to photshop pictures at all... Pearl, teach me this Sunday ok?


By the time we left, it was like 11pm. We lost our way in KL for about 45 minutes. I think I can't see clearly at night. (Ok, later I go see my optician - som pah & swear).

Once we hit the highway, we didn't dare stop for any toilet breaks and reached Tuas checkpoint around 3am. Even when changing driver, Jas just climbed over to the back and JT climbed to the front without getting out of the car. The officer wanted to check our boot and JT opened the fuel part wrongly... for 3 times before getting it right. This was when the officer got suspicious and

"Whose car is this"
"There, my friend's husband car"
"You sure you have license?"
"Yes OF COURSE!"
*indignant look on JT's face*

We were spluttering with laughter.

Haha.

Oh, I know Nan don't read my blog... so here's the secret: Jas and JT didn't know the car has a footbrake instead of handbrake. So was wondering why the handbrake signal still on but the car can still move... and then KA-CHING!!! smoke billowed out of the car. Don't tell Nan hor. She will choke.