Learning is Definitely Fun

Last Sunday was an incredible day. Me, together with the ET Ideas team organised Goal Setting and Achieving using The Seven Basic Laws of Nature workshop for 34 people! Isn't that amazing? It was a bigger crowd compared to the previous workshops and this crowd couldn't have been gathered without the commitment from every one of the team.

Welcoming the participants

Let me tell you what’s so interesting about this workshop.

The speaker, Elango Thiyagu, who is also an investor, entrepreneur, writer and trainer

On my own perspective, this workshop lets people know the importance of a goal in their life. If you do realize, not many have a goal (a.k.a. a target, aim or whatever you would want to call it). The speaker would give a rough idea on how you can create a goal that your heart desires and how you can achieve that goal.

Group discussion during practical session

All these are related to The Seven Basic Laws Of Nature and it’s fascinating to hear the experiences from someone who has gone through ups and downs in his life yet still managing to achieve his goals in the area of happiness, health and wealth.

And what’s even more interesting is that the team are always given the chance to try out new things. Taking me as an example, I like photography. Haven’t thought about it as a passion more than writing but, yeah, I do like taking pictures. With the experience from my photojournalism class, I take pictures during the workshop.

Practical session

And like every workshops that we organised, I anticipate a friend’s arrival who’s a professional photographer for some tips on my doubts on photography and how I can improve my skills as well.

  

Boosting laughter through tickles

But you have to understand. With the interesting things that the speaker says, it’s really tough not to put the camera down and join the audience.

Demo for last practical session

Just a glimpse on what he talked about. Like why we are the way we are, how much do we rely on our senses that we don’t really use our mind to think and also how wrong are we in managing our emotions. Instead of using it to strive for our goals, we dwell in our negative emotions. It’s interesting because we get to know ourselves better.

Striving to move forward but being stopped by those surrounding who signifies their own thoughts, words and actions

And in between all his explanations, we had practical sessions. This is like the best part of the workshop. Where can you find games or practical sessions that teach you something out of it rather than just for the sake of fun? Well, definitely in this workshop! This is when I saw laughter’s from those who were quiet and serious for half the duration of the workshop. It’s like the practical sessions lets the audiences get to know each other better and loosen up to being themselves.  

The Seven Basic Laws Of Nature book signing from speaker and author – Elango Thiyagu

And guess what? After the wrap up session of the workshop, a participant actually booked 10 seats for the upcoming workshop next month! Amazing, right?! And for that, the ET Ideas team had a nice meal while doing a post-mortem of the event.

Overall, it was an educational and fun-filled day!

Ladies Night Out

It was a tiring but a fun-filled day as I experienced something rather different yesterday. Guess what it was? A FREE makeover! I'm not really sure why I'm excited as I wasn't really the one who received it.

Anyway, let me tell you what happened.

I was given a voucher of a free makeover session from a brand called Covo by a friend of mine. For some reason (which I know now), it was called ‘Flash Makeover’. So I called them up (I mean Covo) and arranged for an appointment. Once this was confirmed, I went to talk to my friends.

Ever faced difficulty in not getting everyone together when you are planning for an outing or an event? It’s nothing frustrating as everyone faces that too.

But miraculously this time when I called up my friends (Kim - a personal stylist, Deela – a marketing director for boutiques and Joyce – my editor), everybody said “Okay!” It was not the normal “Okay” because it came along with the sound of excitement and grinning faces from every one of them. But there was a catch! I've only got one voucher. So, who got it?

Well, this was how we narrowed it down to that one person. Since the objective of the free makeover was for our personal stylist friend, Kim, to learn more about applying make-up for other skin tones besides her own, so we crossed out Kim and Joyce out of the makeover list. Both of them had similar skin tone so it didn't hit our objective. While Deela and I were more on the darker skin tone, hence it came down to one of us. I was more interested in taking pictures and filming the whole makeover process. So after cutting me out of it, it was all on Deela’s shoulders. It sounded more like a burden but who wouldn't be excited to receive a free makeover, right?

It was all decided and we met up early at Sunway Pyramid (Georgetown White Coffee, to be exact) to grab our dinners. After a few snapshots while taking our meals (and posting it into Facebook), we headed for our mission.

Since only I knew the location to the place, I became the travel guide to Covo in Sunway Pyramid. With me confidently guiding the rest at the front, followed by Joyce and the two ladies still with their little chats, we finally arrived at the location.

Covo was not really a store or shop; it was more to a booth that you would see in the centre of shopping malls. They are in market for only six months now and their cosmetic products are a little different from other brands. Why? I’ll let you know later.

When I produced the voucher and hand it to the salesperson, we were told to wait a while as there were other customers to attend to first. Once the coast was clear, we were then approached by a make-up specialist, Vivian, who spoke something in Mandarin with Joyce. After a while listening to Vivian, with a perplexed look on her face, Joyce told Kim to take over as she was not so fluent with her Mandarin.

The conclusion of the conversation between Kim and Vivian - the makeover couldn't be done for Deela. Why??? It was because the products of the brand were not really suitable for those with a darker skin tone. So, Deela was practically rejected. Kind of sad, right? So what did we do? Head home? Cancel the appointment? Is there any other options at all?

Well, there is an option as long as we are looking for a solution. If we happen to only focus on the dilemma we were facing at that time, we wouldn't have thought of sending Kim for the makeover. Let’s look at it this way. We have all gathered together to have some fun (we don’t often get this opportunity) and we are already at the booth requesting for a makeover. So why not switch the person and enjoy the show?

That’s exactly what we did. Though, Kim was more to pushing it to Joyce who was saying, “I look horrible!” and Kim replied to that with, “I am here after work, you know!” For those who did not get Kim’s reply, what she meant was that her face looked tired and oily after a long day at work and for that reason; she didn't feel like having a makeover. But, guess who won the argument? Joyce, of course! Which placed Kim on the make-up seat with three paparazzi flashing their camera’s at her.

Vivian then took the lead and started the makeover by putting on the primer. It seems that the primer was used to brighten the skin as told by Kim, our translator for the day. Then Vivian moved on to applying the foundation, compact powder, blusher, eye liner and lipstick. And before we all know it, the makeover was complete! Good that I recorded the whole process of it.

Kim looked very pretty. I guess it was because she rarely puts on make-up so it was nice to see a different look of her. Especially with the eye-liner  her tiny eyes seem to pop and gave the illusion of bigger eyes.

The best thing about the makeover was that, you would get to choose either a lipstick or a shadow liner as a FREE gift, all totally of your own choice!

But, that was the drag. It took Kim so long to decide which one she wanted, the lipstick or the shadow liner. Added to that, she was also indecisive about getting the blusher that looked natural on her as well as the travel pack that was offered to her. 

In that mean time, I tried on a lipstick and a gloss. As the result, it was a failure. Like I mentioned earlier, the products doesn't really compliment dark skin tones because when I tried it on, it seemed more like a nude colour on my skin - something which I do not fancy.

But Kim seems to love it and after a long time contemplating, she finally took a natural coloured lipstick for her free gift and purchased the blusher which she fell in love with.

After a couple more snapshots of everyone and almost everything in the booth, we said our “Thank you’s” and “Good bye’s” and left the booth. Finally, our day out together came to an end. We parted our ways and as I was heading home with Joyce, we had a conversation on how I can write this incident better. And I thought, why not start with this?

“It was a tiring but a fun-filled day…”