Surviving Melaka Homestay – with my HTC Desire.

I was shortlisted by Tourism Malaysia as one of the bloggers for the Melaka Homestay Programme at Parit Penghulu recently.
I have to admit that when I agreed to participate, my idea of the homestay was at some Baba Nyonya Peranakan house RIGHT SMACK in the middle of Malacca town. I pictured myself walking around Jonker St, gorging on the local fare (courtesy by Tourism Malaysia 😉 ), being served home cooked Nyonya delicacies by my foster parents & participating in beading, traditional embroidery & pineapple tarts making classes.
Imagine my horror when I saw the itinerary & realized that the homestay is at some twilight area of Sg Rambai/Parit Penghulu (where the hell is that??) !!!

Short of pulling out at the last minute (which isn’t my style) I resigned myself to 2 days of drudgery & boredom.

Well, as of now, (1st night here) I’m happy to report that the trip wasn’t that bad so far, and the bunch of bloggers that came along was an easy-going bunch :yes:
I have to thank my lucky stars too that tech blogger FriedBeef happened to be in the group; as well as Android fan flyguy729!
Haha..we just ignored the (at some parts) boring itinerary & talked about iPhones, Androids, free apps & blogging!

Since there are some interesting activities, I decided to capture those moments using the video camera of my HTC Desire and share it on my blog since I will be writing about this trip anyway.

1st up is a video I took of the decades old, TRADITIONAL, actual lived-in (not the display versions in museums!) village house I had to stay in during my homestay programme.

Video 1: My foster parent’s house

Length: 3 min 52 secs
Size: 44.8MB

Frame width: 640
Frame height: 480

Frame rate: 15 frames /sec
Data rate:1606 kbps

Camera

* 5 megapixel color camera
* Face detection capability
* Auto focus and flash
* Widescreen photo capture
* Geotagging

There are numerous controls available on the HTC Desire so one could have better control of the photos/videos’ outcome.

However, do note that the max/min of these controls are understandably limited.
1. Exposure: One can adjust the brightness
2. Image properties: Contrast/Saturation/Sharpness
3. Effect: None/Grayscale/Sepia/Negative/Solarize/Posterize/Aqua
4. Settings: White Balance/ISO/Resolution/Widescreen/Storage/QualitySelf Timer/Geo-Tag/Metering Mode/Review Duration/Flicker Adjustment/Auto Focus/Face Detection/Shutter Sound/Time stamp/Grid/Reset to Default

My video was shot on maximum Brightness‘, neutral Contrast/Saturation’ and maximum Sharpness‘. White balance was ‘Auto‘ (cos I’m taking the video from broad sunlight outdoors to inside of the house) & Resolution is set at ‘Fine‘.

No editing, resizing etc were done at all. One was because the video quality seems fine. I mean, what do you think?

Two, I do not know how to edit videos! 😉

This Post Has 27 Comments

  1. Sean

    Eek, the washrooms look spooky n scary! But yeah, the rest of the house looks spacious n colorful. The residents don’t seem very friendly though, hehe. But I think I’d be dying to return to KL after just a few minutes. Yeah, would be nicer to stay in malacca town rather than the kampung area. Btw your video looks fine. Image quality not very sharp (can’t see anyone’s face properly), but at least everything is recognizable… And your hands aren’t shaky, unlike a lot of other YouTube videos 😀

    1. Rebecca

      ROFL!!
      Trust me! That’s how I felt too!! And yeah, the residents are not the overall friendly & eager to please type. so it’s uhhh..very natural 😉

  2. unkaleong

    LOL. Now I get what you all meant about the toilet. Video quality is better than expected from a hand phone. But I wonder…how does it compare to the quality of a video shot from the nexus one?

    1. rebeccasaw

      Yayaya..we must take 2 videos of the same scene but with different phones! When ah?

    1. rebeccasaw

      Wahhahaaa.. I did and I survived! so u can too! 🙂

  3. lotsofcravings

    wah dis is ZOMG! would have kicked a fuss and asked to be sent home haha. your video reminds me of the bunch of bloggers i hanged out with in jakarta, really really dedicated to capturing every single moment.

    1. rebeccasaw

      Oh yes! Of course must capture every single moment & immortalized in the blog! We are err.. hardcore bloggers maa.. *roll eyes* :whistle:

  4. Friedbeef

    Link to my site la, dun just mention it in the post, need all the linkbacks I can get :p

    1. rebeccasaw

      Hehe.. was gonna do that.. anyways it’s done!
      Great havin u ard during the homestay! :yes:

  5. kenwooi

    the one happened on the 12-13 june? i was invited as well, but i got other event clashing.. =)

    1. rebeccasaw

      yup!!
      Awww.. I wish i could have met u! it was fun weii! :yes:

  6. AR

    Hey….love the video. So that’s what you were doing in Malacca eh?

  7. Alles

    Hey, this is my first comment on ur site. I’ve been reading it for a while in my RSS reader but haven’t commented before. 🙂 Anyways, thanks for the post.

  8. Jeffrey

    Nice post. have you heard about the new ipad jailbreak? random but I was just thinking about it.

  9. Pingback: Dave Li

  10. Ahh… finally back to Msia. Nice coverage on the phone too considering you were using it throughout the homestay. Surprised it turned out beautiful too! Good phone but better homestay! Hey, you forgot to mention me as I was FriedBeef and TianChad’s homestay partner.

  11. Bernard

    forums who go within the same subject matter? Thanks a lot!

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