White Water Rafting in Sg. Selangor

Back in 2008, during FH SEA Bali retreat, we had an awesome white water rafting experience.

It was so good, we made a promise to do it again, soon. Now fast forward the time to November 27th, 2010, we finally did it!!

Thanks to Jon's effort to put things together, we managed to hit the road early in the morning. A big kudos to our two drivers, Jon and Steph!

Since I only managed to catch 3 hours of sleep the night before thanks to Kancil Awards, I was zombefied throughout the drive, until the "river orientation" when we were instructed to "throw" ourselves into the current, line up our body, and get washed down the stream.

It looked easy, yep. I was the first to go and man, I gulped in so much water! But, it was effective in waking me up, and later proven to be a life-saving orientation.

Why? See the photos below.

Here you can see our second capsize, which happened at the end of rapids, so it wasn't that bad.

The worst was our first, when our raft flipped over at the beginning of rapids! It was totally unexpected and I have never been that frightened before. When we were thrown into the river, I knew that there were people on top of me. So, I wasted no energy to struggle and just allowed myself to be washed down. After a good 40 seconds or so, when I thought it was ok for me to swim up, I couldn't! Even with the life jacket, the rapids were just too strong for me to gain any control. I started to get worried because I was running out of breath!

What's worse was my body hitting river rocks left right centre, and the water drowning me alive. At that moment, I thought "Am I going to die? Is this the end?"

But of course it wasn't.

I remembered the instructions, and tried to line my body up. After I did that, I managed to see what's coming and saw two big boulders. I held myself in between them, and caught that much needed breath. Soon after, a rope was thrown in and I was rescued. Intense!

Never been so close to death? Yep. Best experience ever? For sure!

Here, look at our faces after surviving the first and second capsize.

So, when are we doing this again? I hope it's not another two years wait, regardless, I'm looking forward to it! Sg. Singgor, anyone?

Life changing moments.

Hi all, this is one late entry. My apology. Life has been very different since 1 Nov for me.

1. I have resigned from Fleishman-Hillard Kuala Lumpur.
2. I have joined G2PR as account manager.
3. I have moved out from Klang and is now staying in Ampang during weekdays.

I guess when I said "moving out from my comfort zone" two months ago, I wasn't expecting something this drastic. Certainly I missed the old times, the old colleagues, my old cubicle, lunch breaks, the curi tulangs, the convenience of Mid Valley...

We shall find out together if things have changed for the better, or worse in due time.

Until then, I will just do my best. It is still a new chapter in my life, and I intend to make the best out of it.

Cheers.

Something fun. Something about work.

For the last couple of minutes, I had been scouring the net, searching for the drive to put me back to work on this dreadful Friday the 13th.

Then I saw this, and decided that it would be a good idea to list down words I was introduced to from work place. Terms that college never teach but should. Admittedly many are 'inspired' from Account Speak Bingo, so, in order to not appear like a copy-&-paste con job, I decided to include my impressions of these words.

1. Deliverables - Things promised to be done.

2. Social media - This fad that simply won't go away, so we just have to adapt.

3. Media - Frenemy. The feeling is mutual.

4. Time-entry - Fancier card punching system. So that business heads will think that they own us.

5. Low hanging fruit - Presumed easy targets. The fact is, nothing is easy.

6. Web 2.0 - Some online thing you create, and getting people to participate via content contribution. Most successful examples are online sex video sharing sites.

7. Platform - Most used word to describe something difficult to visualise, also because 'THING' sounds stupid.

8. Draft - To be inserted after every writing assignments, such as news release draft, invite letter draft, why? Cause it means changes are allowed, so pardon the grammar mistakes you know you are going to make.

9. Thought-leadership - Status claim. Basically using some statistics to convince others when you say cost-saving is the way forward, it is THE way forward according to YOU, common-sense or not is irrelevant.

10. 360 - Something that involves everyone from marketing, to sales, to comms, to advertising, etc. Also means minimum three hours meeting.

11. Out of pocket - Pay first then claim with added %.

12. Return of investment (ROI) - Attempt to justify the cost for doing something, such as walking to night market is not enough, one have to come back with snacks.

13. Top of mind - This thing about making people always wanting to think about your brand immediately, such as when I say oil spill, the brand you immediately think of is Bee Pee.

14. Scalable - Things that can be done from 10k budget to infinite-k budget. Results of course, are going to be scalable too.

15. Viral - This fad that simply won't go away, so we just have to adapt =)

This list is not comprehensive, but my executive lunch is NOW, plus, a list of 15 is probably the threshold of your attention span. So..

Mini Cupcakes

Ok, let’s talk about something fun.

On Monday, I got myself a pack of pre-mixed flour from Cold Storage, and booked a kitchen that comes with an oven and instructor.

The box says “mini cupcakes in 15 minutes”.

The preparation was simple and work space was quickly filled up with citrusy aroma of lemon flavoured cupcakes. They were baked for 15 minutes, slightly more than instructed.

After the cupcakes cooled down, I sprinkled some sugar frosting on top, minimalistic-ally decorated it, then TA-DAH, my first cupcakes baking adventure arrived at a beautiful end.

They are my gift to you. Happy birthday Jess =) Hope they don't taste too bad =P

The Kuala Lumpur Celtics

一路向北 - 序

虽然只是槟岛，却是意义非凡的旅程。

感触，是因为我们很久很久都没这么人齐。

这次一定会尽兴。

主办和响应“一路向北”的大家，谢了！

希望明天大家一路顺风！炒粿条，我们来了！

Woman dies in fire as BHP staff refuse to loan fire extinguisher

We all know that public security is gone case in most part of the country. Read the papers. News about decrease in crime rates garner more attention than it going upwards.

But.

This event which happened around 3am today will serve as a reminder to everyone how sick we all are.

Woman dies in fire as BHP staff refuse to loan fire extinguisher
3 Jun, 2010
News source: KomunitiKini

When a Perodua Myvi caught fire this morning on Jalan Cheras, bystander Teo Chai Yong rushed to a nearby BHP petrol station for help. He little expected that his request for a fire extinguisher would be refused by the two BHP staff on duty and as his pleas fell on deaf ears, the Myvi’s female driver died as the car burned.

The Myvi in question was severely damaged in an accident involving a lorry and a Toyota Vios. According to Teo, he heard the Myvi’s female driver call for help while at the same time, a fire around the engine area was spreading. The accident occured at around 3.30 am, near the Cheras velodrome according to Bernama.

While making calls to the fire department and police, Teo made his way to the petrol station. His requests were denied, the staff claiming that the management did not allow the loan of fire extinguishers to the public.

“I was willing to leave my IC with the staff as a guarantee, but they refused,” said Teo.

Angered at the staff’s refusal to cooperate, he started yelling at the staff and said that if the victim died, they would be the murderers.

In retaliation, the staff instead threatened to report Teo to management as well as the police.

When it was clear he would not get any aid, he returned to the accident site.

By the time he returned, the fire had consumed the car along with its driver.

What saddens Teo is that he claims police at the scene said that the driver’s life could have likely been saved if a fire extinguisher had arrived in time.

According to a representative from the fire department, the accident claimed one life in total with two others in critical condition while another person, the lorry driver, was stable. The name of the deceased has yet to be confirmed at press time.

BHP government relations manager Abdul Kaiyum when contacted claimed that the BHP attendants refused to open the door for Teo as he was not ‘acting calmly’ when asking for assistance. Neither did they refer to their supervisor because it was past midnight.

In defence of the staff in charge, he said that the two of them previously had been attacked and beaten up by assailants while on duty at the station. Abdul Kaiyum said that BHP would hold a press conference over the matter this coming Monday, June 7.

***

While this case is being investigated and, hopefully, presented to the public, questions that swirled in my head are:

1. Why do big brands draw negativity so easily?
2. Is it human nature to wish for the fall of successful brands/ personalities/ organizations/ countries?
3. Why is it easier to incite hate, than love?
4. What it takes to educate the masses in detaching individual faults from a brand/ organizations/ countries?
5. What it takes to educate the masses about the belief of innocent until proven guilty?
6. Is it even humanly possible to rectify this envious, selfish and paranoid world?

To me, this is a big sad story about how we have failed each other.

Sigh. Depressing thoughts are no good for hectic work week. Perhaps a few days later I will forget about it and go back to my happy self.