Friday, May 23, 2008

Sick

I'm running a very high fever, have a major headache, have the shivers, my fingers have gone numb and feel like passing out at any time soon. Doctor says I’m distressed. I’m crying while I’m doing my work. I’m still in the office because there are just so many changes. I’m pushed to the brink but it’s still not enough. There needs to come a time when I need to say stop and that time is now. Screw it. I’m going home.


Thursday, May 22, 2008

American Idol 2008 - David .....

Congrats to David Cook! American Idol 2008. David Archuleta is totally adorable and he’s got an amazing voice, better than David Cook’s. But Cook is already a star, is so comfortable on stage, a great performer and he just got it, as Simon would say. It was a good American Idol season when it was the truly the best who made it to the finals. Unlike some others where you didn’t truly believe they deserved to win or is a true Idol. Another 7 months to go till the next ….. American Idol (said in the typical Ryan Seacrest announcement voice).

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

48C Days

It’s bean freaking hot the last few days. Even my air con doesn’t feel like it’s working. In the basement of the BSC was the hottest ever. According to Paul’s truck, Tookie, it was 48C! That’s even hotter than it was when I was in the dessert in the Middle East!

Saatchi Is Killing My Soul

It’s really hard to do work when the brief changes every 10 minutes.


We’re given TV scripts to translate to Chinese and Korean. We proceed to do so when the bosses change the English scripts. Translations start all over again. We then proceed to recording (and it’s really hard to find male Korean V/O talents in KL!) and they change the script again! The revised scripts will not be ready till midnight and it’s being done in Singapore. And we’re expected to do the translation, re-record, strip in into animatics and courier the materials off to Korea by 4pm tomorrow. Freaking insane.


Worst thing is that they only create the problems but they won’t lift a finger to help when it’s really their ass on the line.


Yes it’s all those white men again. Only now, it’s 6 white men instead of one.


One even asked me if he’s torturing me. I told him yes and that he should stay away from KL in the future cos he’s making my life hell.


Sometimes I wonder why I’m so responsible and passionate about work. I almost kill myself getting a job done at times.


But without passion, a job is just a job. And to me, a job should be more than that. I’m losing my passion. Saatchi is killing my soul. It’s time to go.


Friday, May 16, 2008

One White Man Can Create A Lot Of Shit

Because of one white man who thinks he’s the king of the world and everyone should jump when he snaps his fingers and because he sat on making a decision for one week, my entire team and I now have 1 day, rather than 1 week, to prepare stimulus materials for a research we’re doing next week.


The team almost had to come back to work this weekend and even on Monday which is Wesak Day, a public holiday.


But I just didn’t think it would be fair to deprive people of the long awaited long weekend especially when they may have planned holidays or be with friends and loved ones.


Especially since we could have started work last week and have done everything up at an even pace.


Well, the Singapore team is working right now and over the next few days. But I told them to send us the stuff via the FTP site when they are done, then only we’ll start work on our end. Hopefully that happens end Monday so that we only have to start work on Tuesday morning even though everything is needed by noon on Wednesday.


Sigh. Some people just can’t get their shit together and expects everyone to drop everything and clean their shit.


Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Fairy Wings for a Fairy Wedding

For the past few weeks, I’ve been so busy with:

- work (and trying to get out of it)

- selling one property and buying another

- planning the renovation works and purchase of electrical goods, fixtures and fitting for the place that’s been bought


that I’ve not had time to plan for the wedding.


But Patricia is great and I can’t stress enough now important a good wedding planner is to the bride and groom if you’re not planning on a cookie cutter wedding.


We emailed each other info and discussed about the flowers, colour themes, what makes a good florist, type of hair style to suits the theme, invitation cards, décor to enhance the photography, performances, what attracts fairies to a place and so much more.


We also discussed the fairy wings which I want to wear for the weddings and possibly the bridesmaids will also have wings of their own.


I want them pretty big …. Think Victoria Secret!


While those have a stunning visual effect, they’re also cumbersome and maybe be heavy if worn for more than 30 seconds on the runway.


I also checked out these websites:


www.artofwings.com/wedding

www.enchantedcostumes.com

www.fairylove.com


and found some lovely wings. Check them out:

They're so sweet. I can't wait to start making the wings! I'll have inputs for the design but Patricia will be in charge of ensuring that they are light enough to be pinned onto the dress that they 'flutter' while I walk. So exciting!



Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Blue Berry Muffin

Doesn’t this muffin look disgusting? It’s supposed to be blue berry. The client fed this to us during a meeting. Looks gross. And was gross too. But I was hungry. So I ate half.

Small People Produce Loud Stomping.

Why do small sized people walk the loudest? The main corridor in my office leading to the main office areas is tiled but the main office areas are carpeted. From where I’m seated, I have a good view of the entrance into the work area from the corridor.


And when I hear loud stomping or very loud clickity-clacking of heels on the tiles, I’m naturally disturbed from work and I look up, only to see the people who walk into the room with the noises preceding them are petite framed girls who weigh less than 100 pounds.


Maybe it’s the case of the smallest dog with the biggest bark. Not that I’m comparing my slight sized colleagues with a dog of course. I’m merely making an analogy.


I read a book which explained why small toy dogs will pick a fight with a large dog 10 times its size. The book says it’s because owners tend to pamper small dogs more, often giving them treats throughout the day and giving in to their every whimper. Also, when out, their owners often carry the dogs in their arms or place them on seats and on high places. Thus, with that vantage point, the small dog is often looking down on everything and they feel that they are at par with their humans.


Maybe small sized humans just think that they are bigger than they actually are due to whatever reasons which may give them that notion. Or maybe they feel a need to make a bigger presence because they’re small.


I’m not quite sure what it is but I’m hearing stomping in the corridor again!


5 Deaths in 5 Months

I’ve been to 4 funerals this year.


It started with Cheryl’s dad, then Edwin, Paul’s grand aunt, and my aunt just last week. And yesterday, I heard from Michelle Who Stays On The Seashore that my ex-MD from Euro RSCG, Shirley Foenander’s dad passed away. It’s really quite sad.


And we’re not even half way into the year yet!


So either more people are dying these days. Or I’m growing older and so is everyone around me, hence the higher death rates.


Everyone, please remember that wills are important even though you think you don’t have a lot of assets. You could go any time and it will save your family a lot of hassle even if it’s just to with withdraw whatever small savings you have in the bank. Better it goes to your family or nominee rather than to the government right? As it is, our money is already being spent on buildings which doesn’t benefit us and holidays into space for one person who worries about things which are totally beyond human control when you’re tumbling and free wheeling in space.


Oh and I also learnt that if you have a will as a single person, it becomes null and void the moment you’re married. So remember to do up a new will when your marital status changes.


One thing I’ve learnt about death is that it’s never convenient and children should never ever have to go before their parents. It’s heartbreaking just seeing a parent have to bury their child. I can’t image what they actually go through.


It’s funny. When I was younger, in my teenage years and in my early 20s, I’d be perfectly fine if I were taken from this world. I lived the way I want and always achieved what I wanted. While I still live the way I want to now, there seems so much more I want out of this world. There’s so much I can’t bear to leave behind the more years I spend on it.


The Best Guinness In The World Out Of Irelend

I’ve not been out drinking for a while especially since I’m retired from clubbing. But last Friday, Charlotte The Clown was in town and we went for dinner and drinks at The George and the Dragon. Food was okay (except for Paul’s pie which he said it’s horrid so I didn’t even try it) and the Guinness was so-so but the environment was pretty nice. Very English indeed. And we were seated outside at the balcony which added to the environment for al fresco drink and chats. I even bumped into Chetan who promised to organized drinks the following weekend since we've been saying this for the past 4 years.


And on Monday, Sue Ann and I met for lunch. We’ve not met in months so it was a catch up session for us. We wanted to eat pasta so she looked for a random Italian restaurant on the net and made a reservation for two. We both arrived in Taman Tun at the same time and were driving round looking for the place but to no avail. So we said screw it and I brought her to Sid’s bar. Good old Sid’s place. Good food, good drinks and always a friendly Sid to greet us. I had the Full English Breakfast and she had the Pacific Cod and Chips (together with mushy peas!.... which we both didn’t like the taste of but liked the concept of) which was totally yummy.


Then we went back to work which is never fun.


And at night when Paul and I were having dinner at The Curve, Sue Ann calls and said that she’s in Sid’s ….. again! She liked it so much that she brought a friend there so Paul and I joint her for a pint of Guinness.


Sid was there as usual and come over every now and then, bought us a round, told a joke, left us in hysterics (volume of laughter increases according the number of pints consumed) and walked away!


It’s a joke I’ve heard before but it’s still funny! Or maybe it’s the way Sid tells it.


Here goes.


There's a big conference of beer producers.


At the end of the day, the presidents of all beer companies decide to have a drink in a bar.


The president of Budweiser orders a Bud and the president of Coors orders a Coors.


Then the waitress asks Arthur Guinness what he wants to drink, and to everybody's amazement, Mr. Guinness orders a Coke!


"Why don't you order a Guinness?" everyone asks.


"Naah. If you guys are drinking soft drinks, so will I”


(Sid walks away and we continue to laugh and continue our conversation while drinking more Guinness).


He comes back and tells us that Guinness Anchor Berhad Malaysia won the award of the best Guinness brewed out of Ireland. And everyone started saying that Sid’s pub has the best Guinness in Malaysia.


So doesn’t that make the Guinness’ at Sid’s the best in the world out of Ireland?


I sure agree. Go try it for yourself:


SID'S PUB, 34 LORONG RAHIM KAJU 14, TAMAN TUN DR, ISMAIL, 6000 KUALA LUMPUR Tel: +603 77277437

www.sidspubs.com


Monday, May 12, 2008

Mummy's Faceook. Babies Pic

Why is it that once a person, especially females, become mothers, they seem to loose their identity? Willingly. An example is Facebook. I’ve people looking me up then adding me. And when I check their profile to see if I really do know these people or not, all I see is a pic of a kid. A kid I don’t know. I then look for alternate pics of the person and very often, there are none. Just the one pic of the kid. So how do I identify who is the person adding me if I don’t recognize the name nor the pic? On top of that, married women often change their names to take on their husband’s surnames. Not to forget many people have ‘glamour’ names too. That just adds to the confusion especially for people you’ve not met in a while.


I can understand loving your kid so much that every chance you get, you post up their pic. Some have Facebooks accounts for their babies. That’s fine too. But for your own Facebook account?


I don’t get it. But since so many mothers do it, maybe I’ll only understand when I become a mum.


Tuesday, May 06, 2008

In Clubbing Retirement Mode But Still In Club Lists

I really and truly am retired from clubbing. After our dinner on last Friday, Salt Boy asked me out for drinks at J&R and I said no. I rather go home and watch a movie! That’s how retired I am. The retirement started, stopped, started but it’s definitely here to stay.


When I first started my Non-Clubbing modes 1,2, 3, 4 and Final ,Zouk called me to tell me that I’m on their permanent guest list. I never needed it anyway since regulars usually just walk in. But it was just ironic that it happened after I retired.


Now that I’m truly into my retirement mode and only drink once a month and even then only if I really have to due to work or obligations to friend, Modesto’s calls me. They’re opening a new outlet in TTDI Plaza and they’re sending me an invite for a sneak peak as well as an invite to their launch. Can’t remember the details as the girl who called had a funny accent. Will just have to wait for the actual invite to arrive. Thought the era of Modesto’s was over but they must be planning a revival.


I’ve retired for about a year but apparently my name and numbers are still in the various clubs lists.


Guess clubbing for 15 years doesn’t allow for easy retirement.


I think I may go for the Modesto’s launch after all. Not that it means that I’m out of retirement.


Monday, May 05, 2008

Trendy

www.dictionary.com defines “trendy” as:


–adjective


1.

of, in, or pertaining to the latest trend or style.


2.

following the latest trends or fashions; up-to-date or chic: the trendy young generation.


3.

appealing to faddish taste: a trendy hotel.



–noun


4.

a trendy person, place, object, or idea.


While having lunch with a friend, she mentioned that she liked my ear rings very much. So I went out to buy the exact same pair and dropped it off at her office a few days later. Incidentally that day was her birthday too. So she was extra surprised and happy.


She wore them to work today and she sent me a SMS to say “Thank you! They’re really trendy”!


Trendy. We all know what trendy means but that word is hardly used to express ‘the latest trend’ anymore. When was the last time you heard someone say ‘trendy’?


Does anyone remember the shampoo ‘New & Trendy’? It was pretty big in the early 80s. The brand died but resurfaced again recently only to die yet another death.


Anyway, these days, if we wanted to say that something was trendy, we’d most likely use words like ‘cool’, ‘hot’, ‘happening’, ‘hip’, ‘funky’, ‘in’, ‘stylish’ and even ‘stylo milo’ if you were trying to be overtly Malaysian.


Trendy is no longer trendy. That’s so ironic!


Sin Chan Ramen

Lionel The Off Roader recommended a Japanese noodle restaurant in Solaris Mont Kiara. It’s called Sin Chan Ramen, near the new Cold Storage. Paul & I went there and the first thing I noticed was that the owner or the manager was seated at the best table in the house doing paper work and looking worried. That’s really odd for a mid range to high end place, I thought. But I ignored her and concentrated on the décor of the place instead which was quite nice indeed.

Paul ordered his usual katsu don and a variety of finger food. I ordered pork noodle which came with a slab of butter melting in the soup. It was absolutely delicious!


But there was a small flying insect circling my head as I ate, there was another insect crawling out the wall and there was a loud STOMP which I ignored cos I was enjoying the meal while trying to ignore the 2 insects. Then Paul said that the stomp was due to one of the kitchen crew stomping on a cockroach which crawled from near our table towards the kitchen. Ewwww! Gross and extremely hygienic.


When I see such things in a high end restaurant (it’s accepted in stalls when you’re paying a few bucks to eat while seated beside a drain), I always swear not to go back there.


And we haven’t gone back there. But recently, I’ve had cravings for the buttery soupy noodles.


Gosh. To stick to my principles and ensure I don’t get a tummy ache from that place? Or screw it, pay a lot of money and eat dirty food that tastes good?


A New Lamp

One day, the reading lamp next to my bed side table started smoking. As in, smoke literally floated out of the top of the lamp. Paul yelled that I should switch it off and said that the lamp needs to be replaced.


But how can my poor lamp come to the end of its life span so quickly? I bought it from Ikea just 8 years ago. The Ikea TV commercial where the broken lamp got put in the rain came to mind. Don’t lamps last longer than that? Apparently not, especially those from Ikea. I still felt a bit sad. That lamp served me well and was there to shine a light every night while I read before bed. I know. I know. I get too attached to inanimate objects.


So Paul & I went to look for a new lamp in Ikea. There were some pretty good deals but those under RM100 were ugly or too flimsy. So we went to all the other home & electrical stores in Ikano and the Curve but none of them sold reading lamps!


The next day, we went to the SS2 square as there are lots of light shops there. I like Galaxy. They are small but they have very competitive process but they didn’t carry reading lamps. So I went to Maruzen next door. They had reading lamps but they were incredibly ugly. So I ended up buying a table lamp but it was bright enough to function as a reading lamp too.


Until you need one, you don’t realize that it’s not that easy to buy reading lamps.


Friday, May 02, 2008

5 1/2 More Months To The Wedding

Time flies. Paul proposed in January and we had 10 whole months to plan the wedding. And before you know it, there’s only 5 ½ months left! I have most of the vendors and sponsors secured but there just seems to be a lot more to plan for among the various vendors.


I have my Secret Garden of the Fairies theme confirmed but I don’t have the colour theme yet. I originally wanted gold & red but Ivy of Ray Tan Art suggested cream & green instead as they would be a better ‘fairy’ colour.


I have the wedding gown confirmed and I was going to wear a pink and purple cocktail dress for the cocktail wedding. But Fruitcake tells me she’s seen that dress on some celebrity in either Prestige or Malaysian Tattler. That’s an issue having a dress maker to the stars as your dress maker too. No matter. I was contemplating between the pink & purple and the green & yellow anyway. So that has helped me made my choice. Besides, when I show a pic of me in both dresses, all my girl friends are wowed and all immediately point to the green & yellow gown.


I’ve also not secured a florist yet. I spoke to Ray Tan Art immediately after securing Passion Road as the venue as both places are owned by the same boss, Ray Tan. So Ray Tan Art should be familiar enough with Passion Road to dress the place up to it’s full potential, following the theme I’ve set. I’m also going to brief As You Like It and MNG and see who comes up with the best floral & décor ideas at the best prices.


I find it hard to select a florists as they can’t do up actual floral arrangements for you to see as it’s too costly. And the quote is just a bunch of numbers. A ‘hand bouquet’ can mean so many different things.


I’m so glad I have Patricia as a wedding planner. I’d had gone mad with wedding stress had I had have her to run to for advise or just to have coffee and chill out with.


For all the couples getting married and don’t want a ‘cookie cutter’ wedding (ie. one held in a Chinese restaurant or a hotel where everything is done for you but you have limited choices to pick from), I seriously recommend a good wedding planner. She (I’ve not met a male wedding planner) will be a source of comfort and reassurance to you and she’ll take away as much stress as possible. And a wedding is definitely one of the most stressful events in one’s lifetime.


I’m meeting Ivy, Patricia, DJ Beryl who’s also my MC and Fruitcake (matron of honour) at Passion Road tomorrow to discuss colour schemes and set up arrangements.


5 ½ months to the wedding! Thank goodness I’m just involved in planning one of them. Even 1 wedding with the help of a wedding planner is tough enough. If I were to plan all 3, I’d probably need 3 wedding planners and even then may still tear my hair out.


Tagged

We’re officially tagged like dogs. We used to come and go to & fro the office as we like but I guess we’ve got to be more careful now.


It all started with a few thefts in the office. A pen or a stapler would go missing. Then it was perfume bottles and ipod adaptors. The management then thought the best way was to monitor all our comings and going and they changed the pin code door system to a tag / swap card / swipe card / access. I don’t know what it’s called but we all hate it. We now have the hang the damn thing around our necks ‘cos we do move from one office to another quite a bit within one day and have to beep in and out all the time. Leaving it on our desks means we’ll walk to the door only to find we can’t exit, walk back to our desk to retrieve the card and back to the door. Sometimes we’re carrying files and other items so it’s really bothersome.


And it’s really ugly too! We weren’t given a nice sleek black lanyard which has the stylish Saatchi logo on it. Management says they are cutting costs. Instead it was just a hard piece of generic dark blue lanyard. So most of us went out and got some fun, funky and fresh lanyards. And even some cutesy item, added on to make the tag look less like a dog tag. It’s nice to look down and see something cute looking back at you rather than an ugly flat white card on ugly dark blue lanyard.




We occupy one floor but there are 2 offices separated by a lift lobby. One is where the Creative and IT sits. And the other is for Account Management and Finance. So when you come out of the lift, you can choose to either turn left or right (depending on which lift u come out at) into the Creative or Account Management office. But if u are going from one office to another, you have to beep out of Account Management, close the door behind you, walk across the lift lobby then beep into the Creative office.


I once did that as I needed to send some job requisitions over to Traffic in the Creative but when I was beeping into the system at the Creative office door, the damn card won’t work! I ran back to the Account Management door and beeped in there but rather than the high pitched ‘Biiiiiiiiiiip’, I just got a low sounding ‘pooooooth’. I then ran back to Creative and I got another ‘pooooooth’. Then back to Account Management again. Yet another ‘pooooooth’. I didn’t have my mobile with me ‘cos I was carrying the damn job requisitions. I didn’t even have cigarettes with me or I could have smoked and waited for someone to either come in or out so that I could get in to Creative.


Finally someone came out and I ran in.


It’s a disaster waiting to happen. Just imagine being locked out of both offices when you’re the only one left in the entire floor. No mobile, no car keys. I just hope that that’s not going to be me.