About - Version 2
Welcome to CHONGLAND
About - Version 2 was created on December 28, 2006 and superceeded by Version 3 on December 4, 2017
CHONGLAND is a place where I can interact with the world sharing thoughts, frustrations, joys, creations and numerous other things. It's kind of a playground for me, a source of procrastination and an outlet to vent.
The Diary section is where you can read about what's happening in my world, share my highs and lows and 'hear' my opinions, as well as having a chance to respond by commenting (only if you register).
The Photos secton is where I publish photos that I take, and also photos/images that I think are pretty cool.
Why CHONGLAND?
CHONGLAND itself was conceived in late 2003 whilst I was studying at TAFE in Crowsnest. We were learning about flash, html and website and had to basically come up with a portfolio site to display some of our work and demonstrate that we had taken in what was taught. As a name I felt the need to come up with something witty, memorable and slightly offensive, something like Design is Kinky or Praystation. After pondering for a good while I thought I would base the name on a nickname I'd kind of been given by a friend of mine: CHONG (ask for the story sometime). And then I linked that up with part of my heritage in a sense and came up with CHONGLAND, with the main phrase (i guess) being a spinoff of "made in China" converting over to "made in CHONGLAND".
About The Author
CHONGLAND is the creation of CHONG, also known as Samuel Law. I was born in February 1980 in Canberra, the capital of Australia. I spent the first 22 years of my life there at school and at University before venturing out to the big smoke of Sydney, where I now reside in the north northwestern suburbs.
Professionally I work at the CROSSWAY Anglican Churches as Administrator. In my role at the moment, I look after the affairs of the office; day to day happenings, church bookings, stationary as well as some IT maintenance.
Unprofessionally I'm all over the place:
I'm a Christian, which means that I have received God's gift of grace and have a relationship with Him. I faithfully serve at CROSSWAY Anglican Church, Carlingford at graceat6.
I'm a big big music fan, primarily of the Dance/Electronic genre. House is my sub-genre of choice and I "fell in love" with it in 2000 when a venture to Sublime @ Home brought me from the normal Voodoo area up into the rarefied atmosphere of Cargo with the then residents Craig Obey, Shamus and Kate Munroe. From here I myself also picked up the DJing bug and have built up a strong collection of House Records and DJed under the guise of Jacques De
As a 'dance music fan', I believe that there is an inherent need to dance, although the general public do not seem to necessarily agree with me. So ever since I started listening to dance music I've been working hard at my dancing, but even before that I remember building a foundation at various blue light discos and school socials. The realisation of my style of dancing came about when I ventured to Melbourne for the Gatecrasher Summer Sound System in 2001 with James, a friend whose ears are similarly inclined, and saw, learned and adapted their infamous 'Melbourne Shuffle' into my own style of dance. Now when I'm out and dancing people are amazed at the way that I dance and plenty of them come up and compliment me on it. I've even had a number of people take videos, but unfortunately have never seen them.
I am a bboy and have been dancing on and off in that style since 1998 as well, ever since seeing the film-clip for Run DMC's "It's Like That" featuring a battle between bboys and bgirls featuring a very well known bboy called Kujo. From there on I endeavoured to learn the dance and learned with a friend from uni by watching videos like Battle Of The Year and reading instructions from the Internet. Throughout my dancing years I've always focused on the stylistic side of bboying which mainly focuses on footwork and toprocking as opposed to the power side, but have a great respect for power.
I am on the road to becoming a designer as well... I've done some formal training, but am not professionally emplyed within the industry. My interest and love for D-SiGN sparked when in the late years of university where a friend, Ed, introduced me to some websites made with a program called Flash. With this introduction I ventured out to learn the program and ended up being 'self-taught' by reading and experimenting. Along the journey I've picked up several other D-SiGN interests such as photography (some of the results can be seen in my photo journal) and videography.
As this blog has evolved, I've found that this ABOUT page has also changed a few times. I thought it'd be interesting to post links to the older/archived versions: