I'm a full-time mummy

When I came across this article, I was intrigued and wanted to find out more on what does my statues on Facebook says about myself.

Description from the app page:

 "Five Labs predicts personality by analyzing your language, using an artificial intelligence engine. Five Labs examines the linguistic content of Facebook wall posts, pulling key words to make strikingly accurate estimates about individual personalities. The method is based on a study published by H. Andrew Schwartz and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania's World Well-Being Project. An advisor to Five, Mr. Schwartz’s research on language and personality was featured in the Public Library of Science (PLOS) in September 2013.

The application’s predictions are based around the Big Five personality traits: the leading personality theory in modern psychology. According to the theory, personality is based on the following five characteristics: extraversion, openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and agreeableness."

So I checked out the app and here goes my results! To a certain extent, I do agree with the analysed results, quite accurate for some aspects. Wow, right below my name: Solitary, cautious, sensitive, easy-going and friendly. Not bad, not bad. I am an introvert, shy and not very sociable so yeah, that kinda mean I am a solitary type of person. I am also a cautious person thanks to my paranoia of stalkers and kidnappers and all... sensitive yes, yes... easy-going, oh well, as a mother of 3 hyperactive bouncy kiddos, I have to be easy-going, live and let live you know?

As for friendly traits, well, I would say that will only unfold once I am more comfortable with the person - remember I am a solitary and cautious person? So, these 2 traits will have to be dealt with first in order for people to see my friendly chirpy side hahahaha...

What is cool is you can clicked on each of the characteristics displayed to find out more on how it applies to yourself. You can see some bar graphs of yourself being compared with some famous people and celebs or even your friends on your Facebook, not that I bother to know how I fared against Obama or Oprah etc...

You can find out what does YOUR Facebook statuses say about you at Five Labs website.

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

A month ago, I received an email invitation from WooYu Studio (btw, WooYu means 'milk' in Korean) to try out this concept of 'self-shooting service' in a studio. To tell you the truth, I am a super duper shy person and I guard my family and my privacy strictly. When I saw the 'self-shooting service' concept, it got me interested as that would mean I don't have to fake a smile or pretend to be happy and comfy in front on a stranger! I fell in love with this concept right away!

Now next thing being my paranoid checklist was the safety of the pictures taken. I definitely do not want pictures of my family and I being distributed around without my consent so I find out more from WooYu Studio on how the process goes for the images taken. Turns out, with the 'self-shooting service' concept, since we bring our own camera, we totally have the ownership of the photos taken.

FYI, we do not own any DSLR camera and my digital camera has not been touched for ages since I have my Nokia phone which churns out nice pictures for me hahaha, so for this review, we actually used the DSLR camera from WooYu studio. Do note that for those clients who opted to rent their camera (charges depend on the DSLR camera) to do the shooting in their studio, they will copy all the image files into a disc and give to them once the photoshoot is done.

Without further ado, check out my review below...

About the company:
"WooYu studio is a family and children friendly studio. We know how photos bring back memories. As parents, we would like to capture every moments recording our children's growth....and, we also realize that to hire a photographer may be costly to some family. So, here we are setting up a studio where you can take photos of your family with all the essential lighting, tools, background and props in a comfortable studio at affordable price. Services provided: Families, Little Ones, Singles, Make-Overs, Couples, pre-wedding, pre-birthday, product."

It was a breeze communicating with Yvonne, the person in-charge of WooYu Studio. She answered all my worries and concerns and totally understand my paranoid point of view as well. We settled on doing the photoshoot at 3pm on a Sunday. (*Tips: According to Yvonne, best time to do photoshoot is before noontime, around 11am when the daylight is just nice) I also mentioned to Yvonne that we will need to use their camera since we have none but we will bring our USB thumb drive to copy out the images once done.

So on the photoshoot day, I tried to match our family's clothes but hey, who am I kidding?! We ended up decking our kiddos in purple theme clothing while hubby and I have sort of blue black theme.

** Location wise to the studio: To be honest, we felt that the location does not do justice to WooYu Studio. It is situated in a newly developed area (they just started the studio late last year) So, all around the shoplots area there are a lot of empty lots. Anyway, we finally managed to find the right block based on the map provided by WooYu Studio to us and once we stepped into the studio, we felt so comfortable and at ease. Totally different feel from outside!

** Equipments and facilities provided in the studio:

Tucked at one of the corner in the studio, you can see tons of kiddos' costumes being hung on some wooden rods. There are also cute little caps and hats and hairbands and all sorts of accessories for the kiddos (there are some adults hats as well) One of the things that caught my eyes was a nicely arranged row of disposable diapers in one of the racks. I asked Yvonne what are the diapers for and she told me sometimes, the parents who came for the photoshoot needed to change diapers for their kiddos and hence, the spare diapers for their use. What a nice gesture!

The decoration around the studio has a home-y feel. Lots of nice plush toys and comfy rugs. Smooth clean floor and bright lighting shining into the studio. You can also see different backdrop themes to lighting, cameras, lenses, flashes, props in the studio.

Since we are not experienced in using DSLR camera, Yvonne and her partner, Mr. Yoon were so helpful in guiding and teaching us how to take pictures using their Canon 5D Mark III DSLR camera. All I know is I just need to point to where I want to shoot the picture and press the button hahahaha... While we get ourselves familiarise with the camera and have fun trying out the accessories on our kiddos (and ourselves!), Yvonne and Mr. Yoon quietly and quickly setup the backdrop and everything that is required for us to commence our photoshoot.

** Photoshoot session in the studio:

When everything is ready, we just step into the photoshoot area and start taking pictures. Yvonne and Mr. Yoon quietly slipped away from us to let us enjoy our photoshoot without interruptions from anything else.

I for one am glad I do not need to fake a smile or pose here and there - I mean, I honestly want photos of myself and my family that is natural and not faked out to impress anyone. I want the pictures to show that is how we are.

Some of the pictures such as our family pictures were taken by Mr. Yoon, we love it! And there were some taken of me playing with our 2 older kiddos while hubby carried our sleeping 8 months old baby, those were also taken by Mr. Yoon. Lovely shots at the right time!  

We moved on to other backdrops, each time quietly and quickly setup by WooYu Studio while we hung around, checking out the deco and playing with our kiddos.

Watching our 8 months old baby moving herself up to an almost standing position, priceless! Did I mention that I'm happy that there are so many plush toys and soft comfy rugs around?

** Photos taken in the studio:

We took about 2.5 hours in total for the entire photoshoot. Once done, we passed our USB thumb drive to Mr. Yoon for them to copy out the images from the DSLR to the thumb drive. The process of transferring the images was very fast. The awesome thing is there is no fuss or hidden cost which you might encounter elsewhere whereby if clients like some particular photos, they have to pay extra to take the photos back. At WooYu studio, you won't experience those issues.

** SUMMARY OF REVIEW:

We really enjoyed ourselves, we felt very relaxed and at ease with the whole photoshoot experience. No strangers to boss us around, telling us how to pose or how to smile (quiet impossible with 3 kiddos around to be honest!). This 'self shooting service' concept is amazing as you get to have studio quality pictures and yet feel comfy and at home with the environment even though it is not in the comfort of your own home. I would highly recommend this!

You can find out more at https://www.facebook.com/wooyustudio on camera rental charges and etc.

Do note that I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the products in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine.

When I received the invitation to review this book, I never expected I would have to print out the book myself before going through them with our kiddos. Often, I get PDF copy of books that I reviewed (sometimes I prefer PDF as it is expensive to mail the paperback version to me in Malaysia) but there are times when I insisted to have the paperback version as well - this would normally be for books that I can use for our kiddos as I want them to flip and work through the book together.

But for this book, it is a first unique experience as the author is hoping to fund the production of the book through Kickstarter project. Since I can't request for a paperback version, I decided to print out the book myself and laminate it using our recently bought laminator machine. Why laminate when we can read it on our iPad or PC? The book is full of beautiful illustrations and I think it has a potential to be reuse again and again in future, hence the decision to print it out myself.

Title: A New Friend for Sally
Author: David Tang, Lora Lee (Illustrator)
Publisher: Tiny Robot Books (Independent book)
Paperback:  20 pages

Description from the product page:
"The tale of a lonely farm girl who really wants a pony, but instead her dad gets her a chicken... an animal it turns out that she's absolutely terrified of! A New Friend for Sally is a heartwarming story about unlikely friendships with the valuable lesson of not judging a book by its cover. This children's book is for kids aged 6-9."

Firstly, the illustration is very very nice. I love the details drawn and reading this book together with our 5 years old boy and 2.5 years old girl is just a wonderful delight! I think the colors would be much more intense if it is printed from a higher spec printer but since I printed it from our home printer, well, that is good enough for us as it is.

As our 5 years started his pre-K this year, I decided to read through word by word on each page (instead of summarizing the story and telling a simpler version based on his understanding which I previously do), stopping from time to time when there are words I think he may not hear before and then explaining to him what the words meant.

I can see our kiddos being very interested in this book, since this is kinda the first time they go through a book with different layout and feel. As I flipped through the laminated pages, I make use of the opportunity to play hide-and-seek with them as well, asking them from time to time to look for certain objects and animals in the pages.

I use the opportunity from this book to teach our kiddos to:

- Not throw tantrum when things doesn't go your way. Just because whatever you wished for doesn't materialise, it doesn't mean the end of the world. We should pick up ourselves and move on and make the best of what we have.

- Be brave and face your fears. Just like Sally, even though she is terrified of her new pet chicken, things worked out in the end and they became the best-est of friends.

- Not judge a book by its cover. We should not be influenced by first impressions or our false sense of security.

In summary, it is a very fun book on friendship with educational values which can be instilled in our children. I can definitely see this book being read over and over and over again. Highly recommended and I hope this book will be marketed soon!!

You can find more info on this book at http://www.tinyrobotbooks.com/.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a PDF copy of the book in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews"