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i am just finishing my website! i used Kompozer to make it which you can get free. i have no idea how to do anything fancy, but its got everything i need. a sponsor me page, about me, about the clipper race and so on. to find out all about it click  http://www.laurasclipperdiaries.com/

my family. (see, they are not odd at all)

let me introduce you to my family...

er, they are a little strange looking. that, of course, did not rub of on me at all. (i am the one in the black and yellow dress) though my fashion sense in this picture seems to have been affected. i have two sisters and a brother(whose sexuality we used to question. the picture on the right.) i have to share a room with my older sister, which is annoying because she is a workaholicwith an attitude problem. i really hope she doesn't read this or i'll be locked out for a month. my mum and dad are great, they don't stress that much and practically no curfew. 

these are the characters i am going to be living with for the next few months, so you will get to know them well!

desaru, malaysia, squashed in the back seat. 5.31pm and 14 seconds

“Why don’t we do something spontaneous?” my mums voice breaks the silence with her predictable refrain.

These things always start this way. My parents decide its time for a holiday, devise a crazy plan travelling there for less money than you would pay for a sandwich and end up in an overpriced golf resort because there was nowhere else to go. Thankfully, the chaotic nature of these adventures also means that most of them don’t happen.

It was my dad’s birthday so he decided we should go to Desaru Malaysia because that was where all his work buddies go. So, after hiring a car and putting the birthday cake in the freezer, we were on the road out of Singapore. Or at least we thought so until we realised we were heading in the opposite direction.

 

 

Finally we saw the start of the queue ahead and breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately queues, like icebergs, have nine tenths hidden round the corner. One hour later we were still there. Another hour later, we had opened the snacks, the CD in the car was on repeat and I could tell by the suffocating quality of the air that dad was really enjoying his birthday. I tried to convince everyone that this was ‘quality family time’ but was met with nothing but silence, and rhythmic munching next to me.

 

Much later, we were on the open road. I passed the time identifying road kill and explaining to my brother that trees didn’t usually grow in straight lines, the vast plains of palm trees were harvested for oil. The younger trees looked like the tops of pineapples poking out of the ground and the sky behind them was like a smudgy cirrus reflection of the grassland around us.

 

We didn’t pass many villages. The area was strangely desolate, buildings abandoned and left to bleach in the sun.

I suggested that we start making phone calls to some hotels to see if they had any vacancies, surprised that someone hadn’t mentioned it before me. We used my dads phone to Internet search hotels in Desaru. The only thing we found out was that internet on phones is not a very clever idea and every time we clicked onto a new page it was necessary to scroll down through endless ‘trackbacks’ and ad’s before you got to anything useful. But times were desperate and nowhere had vacancies. Then we hit lucky, and found a place with all the room we could want. Despite mild speculation as to why exactly they had so much room, we were glad to know we weren’t sleeping in the car tonight and so we told them we would be there in twenty minutes.

 

We rounded a corner and the thick jungle gave way to the unexpected sight of a sprawling castle-themed complex, plastic flags frozen as if flying in the wind. Over the red tiled turrets we caught our first glimpse of the sea. “What is that place” We exclaimed, partially out of horror at finding a tourist hotspot of commercial perfection after driving for hours through rocky tracks and dusty plantations, and partially because we weren’t staying there.

 

Another mile down the road we started to spot little huts like beach houses through the trees. “Here we go”, my dad smiled. My mum’s eyes widened. “Oh no. Oh no, you can’t be serious”. We came in through the muddy gateway and beheld the sight in silence for a few seconds. Little salt stained huts scattered along the weedy rock littered dirt. They cowered in the shadow of what I think was a recreation hall. That or the meeting place of a religious sect surviving hard times. The roof stretched into a huge peak that pointed towards the sky, along one edge was a hole as if something large had taken a bite out of it.

 

The person looking after the place watched us, beady eyed as we continued down the track, turned around and headed back out as fast as we could. “Oh, can’t we stay there?” I muttered. It wasn’t pretty but it was bound to be more interesting to stay there than some crumbly B&B . I mean, interesting in the way you wonder if you are going to find a dead rat in your bed or not.

 

We continued up the road. We finally came across a large hotel, and drove into the car park, which was inhabited by a tractor dressed as a malevolent train, giving a ride to a small girl and her father. They puttered round the parking spaces and we pulled in next to a bullet hole riddled black car. My mother narrowed her eyes at dad as if he did it on purpose. We climbed out and headed into the reception hall where my sister and I emitted loud ohhs and ahhs and after a few minutes wondering around realised everything was identical to a different hotel we visited in Bintan, from the sun beds down to the bathroom signs. My dad went to reception hoping to be harder to turn down in person than on the phone, but came back with a grim expression; looks like all the rooms are taken. I looked around, but the place seemed totally deserted apart from a few people dressed in matching blue t-shirts.

 

Dinner was quiet; we were all alone in the restaurant. We watched the group of blue t-shirted people grow larger and start on a sumptuous buffet through glass windows. Plates of steaming food were carried past us through to them, I could only sigh and start on my salad.

 

The beach, though, made it all worth it. The sand dropped steeply away to a warm green ocean, the huge waves made satisfying smashing sounds. We could only go knee deep the currents were so strong but we walked away dripping all over from a particularly large wave. Meanwhile, phone calls were made and every receptionist within a thirty-mile radius interrogated. We finally found a place and drove away, only after promises to my little brother that we will come back tomorrow for a marathon session of table tennis. Wearily we climbed back into the car and because dad was annoyingly ignoring our questions about the hotel, we were once again revived by the sounds of the radio and all started dancing when speed bumps coincided with lines like ‘my lovely lady lumps’. My brother unfortunately, caught the concept of the song quickly.

 

The new place was right on the edge of a man made lake, where forty boats or more were moored along a long wooden pier, from big iron cruisers to little fibre-glass catamarans. Walking alongside them, the sun nearly blinding me from the glare off the water, owners proudly washing their decks and polishing their instruments, willing me with their eyes to ask them a question about their boat.

We learnt that you could get a passenger ferry straight from the hotel to Singapore. I felt a huge laugh that summed up my exasperation surge inside of me, but I was slightly scared of what would happen if I let it out. My dad’s eye twitched.

 

The apartment had not been lived in for a while, a musty curtain smell pervaded the rooms and bugs littered the floor as if giving up hope of getting out. The place had a kitchen, though without any cutlery or plates and amid a pile of broken ply board and rusty nails we discovered a flight of stairs leading to an unused empty room.

 

We huddled round the TV and watched ‘lord of the rings’ after smothering ourselves in mosquito repellent. We eventually dragged ourselves off to bed, gingerly stepping around in bare feet and trying to subdue the worries of our mum of someone coming through a secret panel in the room upstairs.

 

 

Breakfast was lovely, and for once we weren’t the last people to get a table. Breakfast buffets are the best, especially in Asia. Where else could you get noodles, prata and an omelette all at the same time? We trundled back over to the other hotel and enjoyed a few hours of skin scorching fun. Soon I had had enough and went exploring for something to do. I found a few editions of ‘golf life’ and ‘the business times’ that were being used to prop up a table in the hotel shop, and I took them away and read them cover-to-cover, waiting impatiently for the others to get squeaky with sunburn.

 

Lunch, a number of similar sandwiches, was interrupted by my sister hurrying to our couch clutching her mouth in distress. She had fallen over in the pool onto her teeth and one tip had broken off. Flecks of swimming pool blue stuck to her tooth and I was reminded of the time I had broken a tooth upon helping to carry a demonic sofa bed. I told her it wasn’t as bad as she thought.

 

My mum insisted we should rush back to Singapore right now, whereas my dad and I told her after she had recovered she would be fine, and adding five hours of car-sickness into the mix wouldn’t help. Thrusting Hailey’s tearful face towards us eventually convinced dad, but while driving away we both looked back at the skidoo sign at reception in longing as we squelched and settled into the car seats, clothes wet from swimming gear underneath.

 

Back at the border in the queue, the entire thing had been forgotten and my mum and dad had convinced themselves it had been an excellent ‘getaway’ and they should do it again next week. My sister once again gnawed on a candy bar, broken tooth forgotten, and I prayed this was the last time we would listen to the CD.

We drove off into the city smog sunset. Them, singing happily the praises of hire-car travel. Me, watching in trepidation for the next destination to spring up in the chatter as we unwillingly speed towards ordinary life again. Next time, I will bring an i-pod.

my life in the limelight

 

This is a true story. My experience in the fashion world is not one everyone has been through. It was what feels like many years ago, although it can only have been a year and I no longer recognize myself from the pictures in the magazines. I still can’t decide if it was a good or bad experience, because once you get a taste of something that cuts as deep into this strange fantasy world, where your survival depends on your waist measurement, its hard being normal again. People at school are still glancing at me as if I’m something special. I think I feel both good and bad intensely.

 

I’ve been in a few magazines, my first was teen vogue. My god, did it really happen? They sent me and my mum on a plane to New York for a shoot, that’s what they do you see, give you a taste of something that sweet, then once you’ve fallen for the bait you can’t back out because everyone in your class knows and they keep asking you what your doing next. I miss school and music lessons but I don’t really care because all I want is that little thrill again. I never liked the popularity it earned me. A girl in my year, pregnant at fifteen, came up to me and

 started an uncomfortable conversation. I’m sure she’s a very nice person, but I know we’ll never be friends if that’s the reason she is talking to me.

 

I’m not a very talkative person especially with people I’ve just met. That’s probably why I never made it big time. Everybody else was so skinny and chatty and pretty and I didn’t look like them, I didn’t feel like them.

 

The head of the modeling agency spotted me. She was doing a BBC documentary on her agency, and she said I was the best she’d seen all day. We were at the Birmingham fashion show and I was pretty ill that day and had sat down on the floor, piled with my friends’ coats while they went to the bathroom. When I got up with a groan and shook off the coats covering me she looked up sharply and asked me what size I was. I said I was a UK 8/10 which isn’t big, but it isn’t model size I know. She said later on at the agency while measuring my waist that I could be a big thing, and that she was sending me to the guy who casts Prada.

 

I looked up at the big posters with skeletal sex on legs staring at me and just wondered.

I can’t walk in high heels. I can pretend, but I never wear them at home or shopping because I’m too tall. One time they made me dress up in a see-through shift and a pair of heels, and with three onlookers watching me stomp around the room criticizing me in French, I think one of them said something like she iz too clumzy, and fat as well’ but then again I did get a C in French GCSE. (by the way I am not a dumb blond and I have very good GCSE grades, although I am a blond)Also, that had to be the day where a giant zit had appeared on my chin.

 

I got gym membership by saying I was 16, which worked because I look way older. I was determined to lose weight and become a catwalk model, which I practiced on the treadmills when no one was looking, with sucked in cheeks and everything. Another time, I met with

 Mario Testino (very famous photographer), who is very nice, and has lots of yummy Italian assistants. I can act chatty and smiley if I want to, I was told he only picked lively models, so I stuck on a grin, and wore my loud Issa dress, and that month I was included in vogue, wearing a very uncomfortable combinati

on of leotard and army trench coat.

 

The theme was young London’ and people doing the shoot weren’t wearing very much, never the less they braved some really cold weather on top of a tall building and I’m just glad I got the coat! Well I didn’t really tell anyone about this one as I learned from previous experience, but my omnipotent textiles teacher knew, and she seemed to hold me at arms length in class, whether from pride that I got spotted on her trip and hope that she would be one of my privileged friends(joke), or fear that one of her students, at only fifteen had dug deeper into the fashion world than she was ever going to.

 

Everyone I know thinks that modeling means Kate moss and being rich and famous and glamorous, but all the models I have spoken to at the agency and on shoots are bone broke, encouraged only by that elusive prize of supermodel status.

One day me and the rest of the newbies had to make a video to show potential clients, so we went of to the park and were told we were going to dance for the camera. Oh yay! Lets make a fool of myself in front of everyone by saying she can’t dance with no music, of course you can! When you’re a model, they ask and you do it without question. That’s the way it’s always worked.

 

I did have fun, when I wasn’t trekking round London with my mum in tow, or queuing in an ally way with fifty other girls, waiting to see three dragons in a basement, their mothers waiting outside wearing smug expressions. My mum was very supportive through that time. She was highly critical of everyone we met and finally my eyes were free of that glossy gauze I saw it all through. That was the last time I ever want to a casting, and I’m glad of it, although I can’t truly say that I don’t regret quitting. Who could?

 

Fame and riches. But then the agency phoned up and said we owed them three hundred pounds.

the clipper round the world race 07/08

The sailing world seems to exist only in the gloss of magazines, whether it is hard-core adventure sailing, Mediterranean regattas or celebrity owned super yachts.

So when my father excitedly told me about a race of ten yachts manned by taxi drivers and accountants I gave it one look and dismissed it as one of those mythically elusive events. Irrelevant to my own life as the latest celebrity legal battle or the invention of soy underwear.

Meanwhile my life was filled with a flurry of revision and stress while becoming accustomed to our new home in Singapore, having moved out here into the cultural and ethnically varied urban jungle half a year before.

In January 08 the ten clipper yachts arrived in Singapore. Ten gleaming boats, each named after and sponsored by a city, packed together swarming with their weather-weary crews, cleaning, packing and sunbathing. I took in the scene and compared it to another future, one lived in gloomy university halls and cheap student accommodation.

Finally I saw this as an opportunity that I could not turn down.

My excitement grew as I received the contract and read the insurance details. I pretended to fume at the measly sum of $54,000 compensation in case of death while my mum paled at the list of possible injuries. Accidental bodily injury which results in loss of limbs/ eyes. Permanent total disablement. Hijack.

The ocean seemed a more dangerous place back in the days before GPS and weather radar systems. Back before thriller blockbusters filled with impossible danger but somehow the heroine always makes it back home safely, perchance with a handsome deckhand in tow.

I wasn’t worried despite the talk given to me and the rest of an anxious audience, while on a tour of the clipper yachts that described the speedy death of anyone swept overboard into a cold sea in a matter of minutes. Such an accident occurred on the 07/08 race, though I am relived to say they survived with injuries that could be slept off on board their yacht ‘Scotland with style’. The crewmember got off at the next port stop and willingly rejoined the race later on, even finding love with a crew member from another boat.

On the same oceanic journey, the ‘Uniquely Singapore’ yacht carried Hizam Haiyon, the only Singaporean to circumnavigate on the race. He was lucky enough to be sponsored by Keppel corp., whom he has worked twelve years for and who have also sponsored five other employees in an effort to ‘unleash their potential’.

 It is true, according to Jenne Liu, that people grow and change during the race. ‘One can see the true character of a person when the going gets tough. There's no way to hide a selfish or lazy or skiving nature! Everyone has to confront his/her own demons!’ 

Jenne saved for three years to complete the first leg of the race. On first reading about it in a newspaper she thought she wasn’t good enough to compete but later found out that the selection process for the crew was not based on lengthy endurance tests or past experience, but for anyone who wanted to have a go.

Nineteen of the Singapore crew were sponsored by their companies. It seems to be an effective way onto the yachts as sailing is on the pricey side, each leg going for about ten thousand dollars plus training, and the round the world at $87,000 which means that this race designed for ‘anyone’ will have few takers from those with a mortgage and a family to take care of. It is no wonder that half of all people who apply for the race don’t get past the first stages and, as the contracts bring the weight of commitment to those who like the idea of sailing only as a passing fancy.

The ending of the race may have been satisfying for the triumphant ‘New York’ yacht, but could anyone who has taken part in such an adventure be content with a nine to five job consuming their days once more?

Upon finishing the race Jenne had no problem returning to her old job as a freelance tour guide, but she continues to battle with the elements by trying out skydiving. She may rejoin some of the friends she made on the race, sailing from Singapore in August and next year she heads down to Antarctica.

‘After the race, all the discomforts, fears and hardships are very quickly forgotten. I only remember the good bits!’

It is commonly known that yachtsmen/women have a very selective memory, only recalling the choice bits out of the swirl of stormy sea and damp sock filled days, otherwise a bad days sailing would put off even Robin Knox Johnston himself. However, the rest of us are given hope that their experience hasn’t put them off sailing forever.

find more about it at www.clipperroundtheworld.com/ 

I am sitting at my desk enduring the second week working here interning at Ogilvy Singapore (elite advertising agency). the very fact that i am writing on here must show how useless i am, they have even stopped giving me photocopying work!

ALTHOUGH, yesterday, i was offered the chance to go to a commercial shoot, and i was like Yes! so at 3.45 we went to Pasir Ris by taxi, to some very

 dodgy looking flats and stopped outside a minimart, they told me to run in and buy some marlboro reds so i rushed in and out. They told me 'sorry, but we need Marlboro lights instead.' I rolled my eyes and stalked back inside (this is not a random detail - i swear it is part of the story!).

 They had left the taxi, and i gradually came to realise that this was the location of the shoot. I was told i must stay outside because there ‘Wasn’t enough room’. so i sat there with a singaporean who told me he had already been waiting 30 mins because his friend had told him to come, but he had no idea either.

Waiting there forever, I came to a startling realisa

tion. Singaporeans, the ones with chinese ancestors in paticular, have no age. honestly, it was stunning now that i looked around. the women walking past me could be thirteen or thirty! the only thing that gave it away was the way they dressed. it is obvious with europeans, their skin quality degenerates and they have obvious lines on their face, not to mention the obvious weight increase (tee hee. Nah, it won't happen to me, what are you talking about?), but the women milling round me on the street were all slim enough to be models. unfortunately for them the asian genes has a different surprise waiting for them - female pattern hair-loss. (the truth-i swear!)

 I'm sorry, i thought this picture was a grumpy woman in a wig.i got bored and went to go look in the minimart. i saw a grim reaper staring at me amid a crowd of technicans! One of them noticed me and hurried me out looking as though she had seen Grim herself. I was starting to peice together what was going on. Having been a ‘just for laughs’ enthusiast for some time, i had already seen the security monitor trick.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bf-7PxQ894 

Just then they told me they were ready for me. Iwas handed ten dollers as a prop (which by the way, would not be enough to buy them here thanks to  tax!) and told to go in and buy the ciggies. I didn’t want to dissapoint them by telling them i already knew what they were going to do when they had put so much effort into it! So instead i gave them a show. 

 

I walked through to the lonely minimart casually. I ‘happened’ to glance at the screen and froze when i saw grimmy behind me. He started walking towards me. I spun round and obviously due to computer sorcery he was not there. I looked freaked and backed away, grabbing the cigarettes on the way. I was greeted by the team laughing at my reaction and telling me that if they had told me about their 'trick' they wouldn’t have got such a great response. I smiled at their naivity. after all, who would be scared? i am amazed i convinced them. so that was it. my great acting debut.

After that they ‘let me in on their secret’ showing me the split screen they used, on one side showing recorded footage of grim and the other side showing real time. Unfortunatly if anyone walked accross the divide, they would seemingly dissapear into a parrallel universe.

Me and the team spent the next three hours staking out the minimart in a little back room, a running tab on the counter fuelling us with snacks and coke zero. we had some people outside regulating the people who came in which must have immediatly put them on edge, and we had to keep telling the shopkeeper to stop being so friendly. We got a few good victims. One of the team got a few people driven all the way down from the office to ask for ciggies, only one out of four worked and it is a 40 minute trip down there! Shows how valuble they think their juniors time is! after they were done with, they were sent away none the wiser!

 

Eventually a group of teenagers showed up laughing at the whole thing and finding the hidden cameras, we left, very suspiciously, a whole group of people coming out the back room of the minimart. We left them still staring at themselves in the camera.

That was the end of my adventure. I had to leave the others pretending I was going to have nightmares thanks to them and let them enjoy their joke, little knowing that the joke was on them.