AYL 4 LIFE

The first new friend I made in the bus was a guy from Penang. It was his second time being shortlisted.

The venue was Port Dickson. The place was covered with bushes, but I could hear the waves beating the shore. This was where the 160 shortlisted applicants stayed for the next three days. My serial number was 100.

Upon arrival, we were given lots of assignments such as debate, group presentations, performance and public speaking.

The most unnerving thing I did was to catch up with my sleep during the debate. Everyone was putting up to his/her best behaviour as panelists were observing us. I slept throughout the debate. Haha.

Later in the evening, we have to come up with our own performance. Being a performer before, I had no problem in picking up the steps. In fact, I felt grateful to have a dancer in my group. He choreographed.

As all participants were given slots to perform, some choreographed to Justin Bieber's song. And at that time, I was addicted to that song because my colleague played it everyday throughout the day.

Guess that song? Baby baby... Ooh... Be mine...

And I managed to get one of my team members to sing along. In short, I was having my own karaoke at the backstage. It was even more hilarious to see one guy acting as a girl with that song? Creativity goes beyond infinity...

Public speaking was saved for the last day. And I could not wait to get back home since I was recovering from irritated bowel syndrome. It was a torture as I could not sleep and eat well. But I still have to work on my last assignment.

Everyone in my team was expecting me to talk about environment. Interestingly, I didn't. The environment topic is so broad and I could not find the right issue, or rather I do not have much concrete information to share. I find it challenging because we had to talk for two minutes in English and one minute in Malay. I was actually panicking because my malay is not fluent.

After a long thought, I decided to talk about money management. It's a topic I am very comfortable with since I like money. Haha. I never thought my love for money would be my saviour.

All participants were split into several group the next morning. While waiting for my turn, I could hear others started talking about their topic via microphone. It was nerve wrecking. It was even more in my group. The facilitators kept saying NEXT when they deemed not interesting. I introduced myself, my organisation and my topic: How to be rich.

Phew! They did not cut me!

We left the venue by mid afternoon with butterflies in our stomach.

Tidbits: One of the interviewers looked at me when I told him my topic. I was the only one that talked about money while many touched on environment. Phew. I made the right choice.