Mini Escapism : The Owls Cafe, Bukit Jalil

We found a nice little cafe in Bukit Jalil : The Owls Cafe after we went to Wati + Asyraf's wedding in Selayang last weekend. Wati is Aja's best friend for a couple of years by now and she's kind-of like our add-on siblings. 

*

Like usual, we stopped by for a little snack/mini minum2 after finish our 'main event'. We can't think of anywhere to go and we wanted to avoid the city-area as soon as possible, so we headed to Bukit Jalil near my home. We decided to go to Chatime Bukit Jalil for a drink. I haven't been to Chatime for years - and I was secretly craving for their ice-cold Cocoa Latte. Forgot to bring my wallet so I asked my brother to 'belanja' us all instead :D

Later when Aja arrived and we finished our drinks, Aja asked all of us to visit a small cafe next to Chatime. It is located on the first floor so we took the lift. It was a nice little hipster cafe with owl themed called The Owls Cafe. *I don't usually go to places like this except when I'm with my family - just because. So I was always the 'jakun' one.

And so we ordered Milo Dinosaur waffle : a combination of waffle, dark-chocolate ice-cream, mini marshmellow, koko crunch, Milo and condensed milk. My picture doesn't tell you thousand words, I wasn't fully ready with proper camera setting because we were rushing to go back. I promise I'll improve, here goes : 

Their waffle and crepe were all decent, price ranged RM 12 - RM 18 for each desserts.

Really like how they used hand-drawn murals on the logo, their walls and mini signboards. I honestly took several photos half-heartedly, I realized I changed so much from the person I was years back. 

So you can find everything that relates to Owl family here  - but not the actual one :

*

Nice owls-theme mural by @Dududedoodle :

Note : I later found out that the place is quite famous among food blogger and hipster cafe hunters - so most of the weekend, the place will be packed with people. People might even queue and will have to wait for their turn to enter, so take extra note guys. We were lucky when we arrived, they have a long 6 person table was ready for us all. 

And now I'm suddenly craving for foods from IKEA. 

Why do I have PMS cravings every month ? It's ridiculous =.=

*

The map to the location :

Work Related : Top10 Finalist Lejen Komik

Oh heyy, I submitted some of my visual travelogues from the previous Tokiyo Trip to Lejen Komik's travelogue contest just for fun because I've been keeping and peram-ing my Tokiyo travelogue for awhile now + I don't know when I will possibly finish it =.=

I made it to their top 10 finalist from 77 submissions ! :

*

I sent illustrations of buildings in Kichijyoji town : Nest Robe, Pack Mart and Puku Puku. Got a bunch of other buildings and stuffs as well, but I'm still keeping it for my future travelogue project. Peram peram sampai basi. Well, hey, here are the detailed version :

*

Little Things 222 : 2nd Haul from Taobao/Ezbuy

I'm thankful for the website where I can buy many cute stationaries like this exist : Taobao/Ezybuy/65daigou. Not quite sure why they got so many names but they are actually the same company. 

This time, instead of washi tapes, I bought label stickers and postcards specially for my Etsy buyers *because I love to make them happyyy. I chose the slowest shipping possible so that I can reduce the shipping fees and I also chose McDonald self-pick local delivery for free. Unfortunately I forgot the exact date of the delivery : which was the first week during Raya and I was in Pekan. So they picked another date and texted me that morning of the event instead. I had to call ma and asked her to wait at McDonald for the delivery van at 12pm sharp.

2 nights ago, I stopped by at the apartment to pick it up. Here's my happy happy stuffs for my nice Etsy customers all over the world. If you noticed, 2 of the label stickers are the same stickers that Kiwa sent to me, I like it so much I had to buy it for myself. Note : Most of Kiwa's washi tapes were used to send all Etsy stuffs : 

*

And these cute postcards are used to write some notes to people that buy stuffs from me online and choose to use snail mail to receive the items ordered from me. I used up all my pattern papers and cute paper stationaries in all previous posted items so I thought to buy nice illustrated postcard that people would enjoy this time. 

Note : So if you appreciate the joy of waiting for snail mail and would like to exchange cute stationaries which me, don't hesitate to tell me :D

2nd Note :
Also got additional free box of postcards with various of sky images as well. Not quite sure why they sent it up to me. So I'm also going to pass this around too. Let's exchange stuffs with me!

Events : Azreenchan at Random Events 2016

I registered for 2 events ! :

1. Malaysia Hobby Expo

Date : Upcoming 30th & 31st of July 2016

Time : 10 am - 6 pm

Place : MAEPS, Serdang

Link : Website | Facebook

Categories :

Art Crafts, vehicles, ship and railroad modelling, war gaming, radio controlled cars, planes and drones, tools, devices, equipments and materials for modelling, electric vehicles,  architectural models, table games, literature, master classes and so much more.

Note :

Contacted the guy in charge and told him about how I just found out about the event - and whether there's another spot for me to open a booth? And yes, he managed to squeeze me in. I'll be making a live doodle - perhaps starting on the Friday before the event day and will continue throughout the weekends. Af will take care of the booth while I go and doodle some stuffs on and off. 

So come and meet us !

*

2. Public Garden Consumer Trade Show
Date : Sept 24 - 25, 2016
Time : 1 pm - 7 pm
Place : Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Center
Link : Website | Facebook

Note :

This will be my first international event. I applied for the event probably in June and heard from them back. Later they said that I am qualified to join their event and asked to make a booking payment. Long story short, I'll be going to Singapore to open a small independent booth! Can't wait!

*

Mini Escapism : Pantai Air Leleh, Pekan + Eid

It's just Af, Ma and I this year for our Eid at Pekan, Pahang. My other siblings were at my dad's with our new 'mak tiri' - it still sounds odd for all of us for having to accept a new family member. Roughly our first few days of Eid were packed with variety of foods from all our aunts' and uncles' open houses, mini escapisms during late afternoon before sundown, and answering to people's questions mostly on why my other siblings were absent + am I pregnant yet? *no. 

  *

This sudden idea came from Af, on our first day of Eid. We were both bored and too shy to mingle around with people, so Af asked whether there were any interesting places in Pekan to visit. I can't think of any except for the nearest beach in Teluk Chempedak - for me it was still too far to spend around 40 minutes ride. So I asked my cousins and they suggested Pantai Air Leleh near the town. I've never heard of it before, we Googled the place and thought the images were decent enough for our time-constraint visit. It took around 15 minutes from the town to arrive there. We borrowed Ma's car !

Here what we found. A nice clean beach, strong wind, almost deserted except of few pondoks with couples hanging out - chatting. We were both excited ! I didn't even know we have a fast access to such a beautiful scenery near our kampung. All this time I can only imagine the dirty Pahang River when I think about Pekan. I was so wrong.  

There were 2 families playing by the beach. I spent the time mostly snapping pictures and trying to find a big crab. The weather was really nice, there was even a 5-minutes light hot rain showered us all - but nobody really bothered. Huge cloud blocked the sun so it wasn't hot and humid. Things moved slower, the sound of the beach was peaceful, and there weren't many people around to disturb the calm environment :D

*

This is the location to our new secret hideout :

Note : There were small rubbish like plastic bottles, pampers, tires and stuffs alongside of the farther side of the beach, of course. But compared to what we have in Port Dickson or Tanjung Sepat where I can't even dip my feet in the water, this beach was quite decent and clean. 

*

We were both pretty awkward in front of the camera, so this is the only picture of us taken by ma on the first day of Raya :

We spent 3 days in Pekan and by the forth day of our short holiday, we travelled back to the KL city. We stopped by at Raub to visit Af's family and makan2 raya before we headed back. There wasn't any famous festive-season traffic yet, we were one day early. Ma slept all the way because she wasn't feeling well, so Af drove back the Exora and I read Game of Thrones all the way.

Pekan to Raub - Almost 3 hours
Raub to KL - Around 2 hours

Happy Eid 2016 !

*

Video compilation by Af :

ESCAPISM EID 2016 from Farikarim on Vimeo.

I loooove the video and the song, thank youuuu ~ ❤ 

Work related : The Fourth Month as a Full-time Freelancer

I am alive, I feel like I am running a long run without knowing where's the finishing line - the term running as something that I like to do, but extremely exhausting. That's my rough resemblance of what I am doing right now, for months since I decided to go freelance full-time.

So the month of June were about : keeping up with Freepik task, completing 2 longer-timeline projects and taking new online classes at the same time. All before the month of Syawal, during a tough fasting period when coffee wasn't in the picture. 

*

On Skillshare :

I actually subscribed to Skillshare early in June and took their offer of 3 months premium with only $0.99. A really great offer considering there are a lot of classes that I actually want to take for quite sometime. My current favorites are : Editorial Illustration by Mikey Burton, Pattern Design by Elizabeth Olwen, Pottery Class - Basic by Helen Levi, Freelancing for Creatives  by Margot Harrington.

Major thing I learned from these several classes I take : Keep a sketch book, doodle and sketch everyday ; your inspiration, daily scribbles, reference, visual journal, visual quotes, everything. I saw both Mikey Burton amd Elizabeth Olwen's sketch books and felt so inspired. I tried for the first month and I saw a huge difference in my working process. Freepik tasks are much easier and faster to complete if I spend at least 2-3 hours researching & sketching the previous night. It's like a planning before the actual illustrating process, and it helps a lot. I can't wait to share some of my contents later in different post :)

I did take some classes with the famous doodler : Jon Burgerman and the web-comic cartoonist : Sarah Anderson, but I found their classes pretty basic. I saved a long list of classes to take in these 3 months, hope I can finish them all !

So if you want to try Skillshare class for 3 months, I can share my referral code, just click on this link and try your 3-months premium. It's totally worth it!

*

On Freepik :

I completed 4 tasks (40 illustrations) during the month of June. I finally succeeded in following their initial requirement of 10 illustrations per week. A very productive month of Ramadhan !

My favorites are : the smoothies vectors, bakery and 4th of July themed items.

There are links in my facebook page if you are interested in downloading these free vectors :

*

On the new I'm a Backpacker series - Travelogue :

I can't reveal which book series I'm currently working on yet until it is published - probably after July. My most proudest achievement in this project is : I completed 25 illustrations of buildings + landmarks in the country and a huge visual map of the country ! Now I'm working on the second task of the project with around 31 illustrations to go, gambattee ~ !

*

On secret project with secret client :

The project that currently being put on hold for this festive season. I've been working on the pre-planning process for 3 weeks by now =,=

*

On Lejen Komik travelogue contest :

I thought I should just send the visual travelogue that I've been doing for my Tokiyo trip. They are currently short-listing the group. Not quite sure how good I did with the contest because I actually just sent what I have during that time. Well, anyhow, who knows ? 

*

Run : The Fitness Story in a Year , Jan - June

Early in February, we heard back from 7days Fitness - about 3 months after our 2 months promo subscription ended the year before. We didn't went out for any fitness activities for awhile, we were lazying around and adding up few more happy kilos. 

Until they texted us about their latest 2016 promo :
RM 559 for a year, unlimited passes to classes and gym equipments, weekly training, bring a friend for free on every weekend, RM 80 gift voucher, and free gifts from 7days fitness (shirt, bag, towel). 
The normal fees is RM 799.

After a week of discussion, we decided that we should take the promo offer. We feel that RM 1.60 per day is quite affordable and we consider that we don't have any access to night parks around the area after work and need to wait for the weekend for a run won't be effective for weekly fitness activities. So we signed up for it. I also stopped going to running events since last year.

Here is my 2016 fitness journal (will be updated on monthly basis) :

March :

• Total run : 56 km 
• What I learned so far : After 3 months of resting, I need to catch up with my fitness level back. I had to start from the beginning all over again, by walking to jogging to running, adding few distances per 2 weeks. I need to remind myself in the future; "that if I stop for too long, I need to reset my training again and start from the beginning".
• Strength training : I started to do mild strength training using those gym equipments : for upper body especially torso, back and abdomen, also lower body, because I just run all this time and never do anything else :D The first few days were awful. But I realized that running uses basic muscle strength that I'm so used to - for example even if I run for 8 km, I can no longer feel any bad muscle pain afterwards. But 4 sets of any strength training for not even 15 minutes will make my body sore the day after. I conclude that I might need this after all if I want stronger muscle and bones throughout my whole body to run faster and more consistent. 
• Simple Yoga Stretches : Throughout the day while I'm working at home, I will do several times of basic stretches routine : from hands to heart, to downward dog, plank, cobra and back to the start. This 5 minutes stretches can help my body be more flexible and leaner - sbb I sit in front of the computer for hours.
• Super affordable running shoes : After the third year, my shoes was starting to look like it has been over-worn. I'm planning to buy a new shoe when I reach 800km total of running instead. 
• Challenge : 5km March-ing Forward Challenge - completed! :

*

April :

• Total run : 65 km 
• What I learned so far : It's already more than a month of running training, 3-4 times a week, 3-10km per run and additional of strength training. I can run much faster with longer duration :D From the highest treadmill MPH that I can reach was : 8 to 10 ! I haven't lost any weight, and the only changes I noticed are the running session and more duration in planking. 
• Strength training : I continued with the training after my short run. Nothing changes much, I already managed to do the sets without any muscle pain, probably going to try other new machines that I never touched before.
• Sickness : After my sudden sore throat and runny nose for several days, I'm setting a new daily fruits and veggies regime. Fruits can be super expensive but I'm trying to eat it daily - not only my favorite ones, I'm learning to be more flexible *boo .
• Weather : It's getting hotter, our el nino season has arrived. Hardly any rain and jerebu =.= Even running in the gym seems extra heavy and depressing. Tasya just signed up for a month !
• Goal Update : I'm halfway through my 250km total run in 2016. *Maybe I might add more.
• Challenge : Runkeeper April 5km + 10km Challenge - completed !

*

May :

• Total run : 17.7 km, Total cycling : 15 km, Swimming : 1 hour
• Goal update : 151 / 250 km
• Challenge : Runkeeper April 5km + 10km Challenge + Runkeeper Global 5k. 

• Runkeeper Global 5k : We ran along with 423,539 runners all over the world on the 29th May. Af & we ran at Putrajaya - we didn't know there was Milo Breakfast Day at the same time, lucky for us we got a free flow of iced Milo after our run. We self-printed our bib, ran randomly without any specific planned track but using Runkeeper to track our km, we started at Taman Pancarona and ended at Palace of Justice. We were the odd ones out - both in full black outfit and different bib on our shirt :D

They said around 20,000 people came for Milo Breakfast Day :

*

June :

• Total run : 18.8 km, Total cycling : 8.8 km
• Goal update : 169 / 250 km
• Challenge : Runkeeper June 5km - completed !
• Note : It's was a fasting month and I've became demotivated to run, we only tried to run for the first 2 weeks of June at our apartment 14-floors parking lots. Around 4-5 times, for non-stop 20 minutes run with Af as my pacekeeper and few times before the start of fasting season when we went to the gym for final workouts.

*