I finally finished the damn M100 video. Took me a long time, but everyone was very happy with it, and they said it was good. Awesome! And shit too, 'cause this means they'll turn to me for video assignments next time. Zzz. Kevin, the Korean intern helped me out too, and did a really nice finale.
Yesterday, at work I was called up to discuss the kind of photos we'd want for the M100 Conference, and I entered a meeting room where my colleague Simon was talking with a tall, lanky man. I didn't manage to catch his name as he was trying to pronounce mine, lol. We had a brief but very nice conversation about my working and studying life, as well as how I came from Canada, to Singapore and finally to Kuala Lumpur. At the end of it, he passed me his name card and I noticed that it said Kid Chan. Although I said "Oh, Kid Chan." My head hadn't quite recognized the epicness of it. After another short chat and sending him off from the office, I was like wait.... THE Kid Chan? There are two famous Kid Chan's in Malaysia, one an illustrator who graduated from The One Academy and lectured for a while, and the other a famous photographer who's got huge clientele and recognition around the world. I was like... damn, I just had a fine conversation with Kid Chan and didn't realize it. Lmao. Well, in the brief time I spoke to him, he was a nice guy, and very engaging with several stories and recollections.
Later that night I stayed back to finish some work I hadn't been able to do during the daytime, and Sharon called me up to hang out. I was like, eh, okay, anything. We've chilled out a few times before and we're still friends, more or less back to what we were before we got together. Heard her stories and updates, and talked until 2am, where I went home and crashed on the bed. Died easily, and woke up this morning with difficulty.
Tomorrow's the M100 Conference. It's gonna be a long and exhausting 2 days. Zzz.
And one last thing. As I've bought my new laptop, I mentioned that I was properly filing stuff and making my files and documents more neat. I have a bad habit of keeping notes and sometimes forgetting about them. They're very random. Could be a song I want to download, or a nice quote I haven't filed, or somebody's blog I need to link. And as a result of more investigations... I won't be completing this part I wanted to type.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Aye, been quite a busy time.
Two weeks back JobsCentral and GTI had our planning retreat. It's a time where the chosen companies would go to some place for a 2 day 1 night trip, and discuss and plan further ideas and directions for the coming year. We also get to hear long speeches from our boss Kim Fah, as well as hearing testimonials and talks from the rest of the company. Last year, we had it at Malacca, and this year, it was held at Port Dickson. The drive here was uncomfortable. I needed to wake up at 5am and meet in the office for the drive to Port Dickson. Due to a passenger of mine being late, I was put into Khairi's car while someone else would take my place. Throughout the entire journey, Khairi talked VERY, VERY loudly and obnoxiously on the phone (who the HELL do you talk to at 6am in the morning?!) and when he got off the phone, sang along LOUDLY to the songs on the radio. Sheesh! Khairi's a really nice and funny guy but holy shit he annoyed everyone else in the car. We couldn't sleep properly with all the noise he kept making. Zzz. Wait, not zzz. Because we actually couldn't sleep! GEEZ!
Well, we discussed a lot of things, and we got to hear a lot of people's opinions on their decisions about joining the company, as well as the interactions with one another. For half the sessions, JobsCentral and GTI were split, for our own respective discussions. There were also a few games, one nearby the swimming pool, which naturally led to all of us being pushed inside. In our work clothes. Lmao. And for one unlucky bunch of people, their phones in a plastic bag ended up in the pool too. Aye, luckily they could be rescued. At night, a few of us smoked up, drank wine and beer and had a great conversation, although we were exhausted with the whole day, so it didn't drag on too long. Yeah, and the next morning, Daryl and I were supposed to wake up at 7:30am, have breakfast and go for the next day's session at 8:30am. When I checked my phone, it was 8:31am. SHIT. We got dressed fast as hell and quickly rushed to the board rooms where everyone was already there and Kim Fah was already talking. Zzz.
After the whole thing, Alfred, Karthinee, Yan Yee and I went to check out a nearby war museum before going back to KL. It had exhibits and some actual models of planes, helicopters, guns and keris'. It had different areas that dealt with different times. There was some early pre-Islamic, followed by Dutch, British and Japanese colonialism/occupation, respectively. Then it led to the foundation of the modern federation with the mention of communists and independence. I love history, and as much as I know about Western and Middle Eastern history, I've never learned that much about Malaysian history specifics, knowing mostly very generally.
Last week a few colleagues went to Sunway Lagoon for Nights of Fright 2. We used Groupon to get some discount for the tickets, half price! There was Celine, Adam, Ken, Tommy, Daryl, Lilian, Pik Lin, Alex and her friend, Sal (at least, that's what I heard). There were a few rides open, along with creepy music and a bunch of ghouls all over the place. A really funny trick they'd do was walk beside you and pretend to be one of your friends. People would absent-mindedly talk to them, and when they faced them, they'd freak and/or scream. It was hilarious! Happened to Celine once too. They really had a nice "carnival of horror" atmosphere going on, and I'd say A for effort. They also had 7 new haunted houses built ad hoc for the event dates, with different themes. There was a Pudu jail theme, Alien (xenomorph) theme, a Chinese ghost theme and a few others, along with the established Scream Park, which I enjoyed just a short while back. Alex and her friend were quite interested in ghosts when I mentioned that I was a skeptic, but loved paranormal things, and mentioned my friends and I liked to check out and debunk places, just to see for ourselves whether that place is paranormal. I told them about the story in Ghost in the Machine, where a guy experiences all manners of the usual haunting, but later discovers that a low frequency was causing it all, and once he stopped a nearby turbine from causing this vibration, all "hauntings" ceased. Oh, when we went on the Colorado River ride, it was done in pairs, right? So, due to random positioning, I ended up with Tommy, the person who I've spoken to the least in the entire group. It's basically a water slide, and rubber mats at the end would slow you down before you hit the wall at the end. And this was a relatively decent length of rubber mats. Well, Adam and Ken, both big guys, paired up and they nearly hit the wall, but stopped a safe distance away. Tommy and I however, somehow easily slid past all the rubber mats and hit the cement wall FULL FORCE. Bloody hell! LMAO. It felt like a car accident! Of course, the tube we were on took the brunt of the impact, but we could feel it really strong too. That gave the entire group huge laughs as we proceeded to other rides.
The company's quarter 3 meeting was just a few days ago, and along with the stats and figures for the various entities, there was also a recap of the adventure trip to Redang and the achiever's club trip to New Zealand. The committee needed to prepare a recap video, and as the only designer in the committee, of course it fell to me. I hate video editing, because I'm really bad at it. I've never been good with videos and all the times I've done videos, I've never aced it. I made them entertaining, sure, and definitely I put lots of effort, but nothing you'd consider good. Not to mention its been 4 years since I did my last video, which was a crappy Mentos ad for one of my classes. Plus, this was to be a 10 minute video covering 2 days with a LOT of footage. Luckily in 2 days, I finished it to something I was actually proud of, and the company loved it. Whew! They found it entertaining and well done. I felt good of course, but shit me because Daryl asked whether I could do one video for the company's upcoming M100 conference. Now, doing an in-house video was alright, because shitty or not, it was only for internal viewing. As for something that would be viewed by a hundred or so people that pay for the conference, I wasn't so confident. Daryl's been swamped with video work, and he's got 9 to do. So he really needed my help, and I said yes. So I'm in the midst of dying to use Premiere Pro CS6 properly for a professional level video. Great. Oh, and I got the extra mile award too, for JobsCentral. Ha, due to the Career Builder Tidbits, aka KFHee assignment I did a while back. I hate to be stuck up, but I think I really deserved it. Staying late everyday for weeks and even up to 2am was not fun.
The company also has 3 new Koreans, along with the first 3 that came about two months back. So now, apart from Effy, Ariel and Kevin, we also have Min Kwan, Lee and Sophie. They're not as engaging as the first batch, and not as chilling; they're quite reserved unless you talk to them first. But they're still nice and good company.
There was also a midweek service with Pastor Kong coming over to preach, where he spoke about the blessing of Abraham. It was quite a good message. Compared to his visit last year, there was very little talk about his court case, lmao. It's just funny how so many famous preachers associated with CHC have been big in the news. Richard Roberts of Oral Roberts University with votes of no-confidence quite some time back, Ulf Ekman became a Catholic, Benny Hinn's divorce and his healing ministry have always been news fodder, and even Yonggi Cho, pastor of the largest church in the world has been arrested for tax evasion. Hah.
Last week chilling with Symposium was smaller scale. Andrew, Nikke, Redzuan and I chilled out till late one night, and just Andrew, Hann and I the following night talking about history all over the world, especially the places that Hann had been to, as well as discussing plans for us to visit some of these historical places with a cheap budget. Damn excited! Bruce also dropped by randomly after noticing us while driving past the area, and we caught up with him and tattooing. Andrew, Nikke and I were the only ones the night after that, until James and David's brother Daniel came in around 2am. And on Friday, the company had a Halloween party, but I needed to pass 'cause Essenism was having a buffet at Shogun at Sunway Pyramid. Food was alright, although I stuffed myself way too much. Decent catch up, and we later played in the arcades, just like old times. We played a few games. My shooting skills are GONE. Like, I died really early in all the shooting games we played. Everyone was quite disappointed, with Henry remarking that I used to finish Time Crisis 3 and 4 with just one credit, and now I died in the early stages. Aye, well, that's what you get when you don't practice in the arcades regularly. Miki and I joined Symposium at Ming Tien later, with my band's Chris, Sook Mei and Pip who had come back from Australia, for just a few days. Had a fantastic time catching up and chilling out with the rest.
Saturday night, I went drinking at The.bngsr Tavern with Pip and some of Symposium (Justin had come back from Japan) for Pip's family's Halloween celebration. The best costume was these three guys who did Raja Bomoh and his lackeys. I DIED. It was bloody fantastic! Everyone was wondering why these guys with songkoks suddenly entered the bar, but when they took out the coconuts and basket, everyone cheered like hell for them. Hilarious! Later on, we proceeded to drink more at Hotseat in Sunway. Wow, seriously. I did not pay to see a tranny sing horribly for almost 2 hours. If this transvestite could sing well, then by all means. But my ears hurt, and so did everyone elses. Went home and slept at 5:30am. Pfft. Woke up a few hours later and went to church this morning for Kim Sunghae, wife of Yonggi Cho, who preached about how to get the blessing of God. Although it was pretty hard to understand her at times, it was a simple, happy-ish, fuzzy kinda sermon. And now I'm back home, ready to crash and die before I need to wake up and do my damn video.
Oh, and one last thing. At church, I bumped into my TOA-mate Vomy (or Vonny... not sure which one she changed it to) and found out she was a CHC member. After saying bye, I found about RM70 on the floor. I looked around to see if anyone had dropped it but the area was empty. And instead of treating myself to an expensive lunch, I passed it to a church staff, remarking that I found it outside the cafe and I could find no one it belonged to. She said thank you for your honesty. Hmmm... well, being overly honest doesn't help. Especially with women's dresses. LOL.
Chronicled
4:58 AM
e l e g y