Relaunch of The Rustic Trove!

Hi, everyone! I’m finally back in the UK and it feels great to be able to write again. To be frank, I didn’t think that I would have been as busy this summer, but what do you know?

 

Summer in Brunei

This year’s summer felt pretty short, most probably due to all of the work that got me occupied, but I did manage to go to a lot more restaurants than before.

Aside from the usual student body affairs, I landed a one-month placement at ASEAN Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Brunei. It was a good experience and the officers were very helpful, friendly and inspiring. All in all, the placement got me thinking that I’m probably not ready for an 8-to-5 life just yet! So, hats off to them for being so resilient!

 

Back to Business

Anyway, happy belated 2nd birthday to The Rustic Trove! The blog was actually launched on 12th September, 2014, but I couldn’t relaunch the blog last week just yet, especially since I was running my errands here and there before flying back to London. Besides, I needed all the time that I could get to revamp the blog.

I hope you guys like the fresh, new look! It’s clean, simple and (hopefully) easy to navigate around. Two years is honestly a huge milestone for me because this is probably the first time I’ve held onto a blog for so long after numerous cycles of creating and deleting blogs back then.

A special shoutout to Atiqah Hasnan for being ever so supportive. She is probably the one and only reader and fellow blogger who have stuck with me all these years. Thank you Atiqah!

 

Final Year of Degree!

To say that time flies so fast is an understatement. I just got my annual timetable (for the last time as an undergraduate – OH GOD) earlier this month and I still can’t believe that I’m officially going into my final year of studies! So far, I’m doing well, but the pressure is a bit unnerving, let alone nerve-wrecking, and I haven’t even started yet. So… pray for me!

 

Plans

In spite of going into my final year, I don’t plan on reducing the frequency of my travels because they’re therapeutic to me and they keep me going somehow. In fact, I might actually try to do more travelling, seeing how it could possibly be my last year in the UK where travels to Europe are (still) made easy. Well, at least before Brexit officially happens!

In terms of writing scopes, I’m hoping to do more reviews on film rolls and cafes and I might even try to print my film pictures as postcards, which I’ve been planning since last year. It sounds exciting, but we’ll see how that goes!

As for photography, I might – let me repeat that, might – buy a digital camera. I’ve previously thought about buying a DSLR, but I felt that it might be too heavy for me to carry around since I still want to bring along my film camera during my travels. So, I need something lightweight while, at the same time, I don’t want to sacrifice performance.

After tons and tons of research, I’ve shortlisted Fujifilm X-T10 and Olympus OM-D EM-10 as the best candidates. I’m still kind of torn between these two cameras because they’re both excellent performers and they both have analog-looking designs. Only time will tell if I decided to buy one of these!

 

Up Next

If you remember from one of my Instagram posts, I did a collaboration with Mu’izz Khalid of Wearrior Instinct, Akhmal Aiman and Aisya Soffi when we were in London earlier this summer, and I’ve been meaning to blog about it, but here we are, a few months later… Sorry about that!

But finally, I will be posting it up right here sometime this week, so stay tuned!

You can read more about our collaboration on Akhmal’s blog: Part 1 and Part 2.

Last but not least, I hope that everyone’s doing well no matter where you are and thank you so much especially for your support and for sticking around!

Have a great week ahead!