checking my black warhorse during the flagoff ceremony in KBS, Putrajaya

Since I came back from Northern Norway somewhere on May 2013, I’ve been staying home for almost 10 months, mostly spending my time in front of my computer screen doing editing besides spending quality time with family and friends. It was a good long “holiday” for me, taking a break from living the nomadic life, constantly being a stranger in a strange land.

I won the People’s Choice Award during the BMW Shorties competition in 2013

It was great that the filming project of my second journey where I crossed into the Arctic turned into success where my first travelogue documentary which was aired in one of the local tv station TV AlHijrah had a very positive feedback, beyond my expectation. To me, these were all fated, none of these were part of the plan. The documentary “Dengan Basikal Aku Menjelajah” got the attention of many Malaysians and most feedback I got were incredible visual and music. I was lucky enough to be able to see so many beautiful things during that journey and all I need to do was just to capture it to the memory card of my camera. Even the music, I was lucky enough to meet my current composer, Philip Curran when I was in Glasgow, Scotland. We made it so easy and simple, met in a coffee shop in Glasgow, have a short chat and we finally came to an agreement to work together as a team… just over a cup of coffee. We just communicate on Skype most of the time and Philip managed to come out with incredible music, really matches the visual that I captured in the Arctic.

me encouraging the USIM students not to take shower in the morning so everybody will smell like a horse!

Besides that, I feel so glad that people were actually inspired on what I did. All these while I thought that most people would think that what I do is just a waste of time. But since I came back, I’ve been invited to give many talks to schools, universities, colleges and to many other groups. Random people on the road approached me and shook my hand, telling me that they’re really inspired by what I do, or at least I inspired their kids. Also its good to see that many Malaysian youth are now started to do cycling and traveling. I can see that most of us are becoming braver to explore or to do something totally new.

me explaining to MRSM Jasin students on how to deal with a brown bear with only a knife

I also feel so thankful to everyone who supported me, Kolej Mara, students of Raffles college, those guys that attended to my talk in Palete Pallete and many more, sorry if I forget to mention, you know I’m getting older but you know who you are. Thank you so much for the donation/support that you guys gave me. Also, not long before I continue to live my life on the road, I got recognised by Kementerian Belia & Sukan and had a short flag off ceremony by the minister himself, Khairy Jamaluddin. Really big thank you to Malaysia and its people for all the support. At the time of writing, I’m already far, somewhere thousands of kilometres from home. No more writing this from inside my room, sweating since my aircond still doesn’t work. Oh btw, some update about the aircond, it finally work though, it was quite cold! But leaking badly, and my room turned into a lake. Hehe…

The minister, YB Khairy Jamaluddin completing the flagoff ceremony