Ever since I participated in Adidas street basketball competition when I was 18, I have always wanted to be involved in sports-related campaign. I love sports, especially those team-based ones where different individuals come together to play as one. Think Coach Carter, Remember the Titans.
Now, forth year into my PR career, I have done indie films (another passionate subject), cars (oh-so-cool), gadgets, travel, some bit of corporate, and most recently, beer (hic), never once I’ve got the chance to be involved in massive, on-ground, sports-related campaign.
But hei, soon, very soon, my dream will come true! I’m excited!! Wheeeee..
Thursday, 31 March 2011
Monday, 14 March 2011
So I have been MIA again...
True that.
Work has not been easy. As I filled up my company's appraisal, typing down one event after another; Merry Guinness, GAB Chinese New Year, Guinness St. Patrick's Festival; trying to justify my work, and evaluate my performance, something struck me- I might be too nice to people at work.
There is a level of "niceness" that one should maintain, which others practice, and expect you to. People in this industry bully nice people, they see kindness and courtesy as weakness. And always think "That's your problem not mine, now get my work done."
Seriously.
After nearly half a year of working in a 360 environment on a daily basis, I do believe that I need to learn when to put my foot down, and say no.
So, that will be my KPI. Don't mess with me.
Oops, you can't because you are not around anymore. Nice one.
Work has not been easy. As I filled up my company's appraisal, typing down one event after another; Merry Guinness, GAB Chinese New Year, Guinness St. Patrick's Festival; trying to justify my work, and evaluate my performance, something struck me- I might be too nice to people at work.
There is a level of "niceness" that one should maintain, which others practice, and expect you to. People in this industry bully nice people, they see kindness and courtesy as weakness. And always think "That's your problem not mine, now get my work done."
Seriously.
After nearly half a year of working in a 360 environment on a daily basis, I do believe that I need to learn when to put my foot down, and say no.
So, that will be my KPI. Don't mess with me.
Oops, you can't because you are not around anymore. Nice one.
Thursday, 6 January 2011
My dear grandma
On January 2nd, 2011, 7.30pm. My dear grandma fainted while she was having her dinner in my house kitchen. Around 11.00pm, she passed away peacefully in the hospital emergency ward.
My grandma was very old, she was 86. She never suffered from any illnesses, and was the most easy-going person I’ve ever known. Her favourite past time was to play card games with us, and watch the re-runs of Taiwanese soap opera. She conversed only in TeoChew, and given my inability to fully express myself in TeoChew, we mutually agreed that PR is the most difficult profession to explain or understand, and I’m actually a sales promoter.
I believe that her passing without pain is a blessing in disguise. She left everything she had in two small bags. So, even in her passing, she is still taking me to school in terms of inventory management.
My grandma will be missed. But, we are glad that she gets to reunite with my grandpa after nearly 30 years of separation. Besides, during what seems to be the time to mourn one's loss, I now realised that I'm an uncle to 12 kids.
The family just concluded the third day of her viewing. 11 hours later, she will be buried next to my grandpa. Grandma, 一路走好, 我们来生再继祖孙缘.
My grandma was very old, she was 86. She never suffered from any illnesses, and was the most easy-going person I’ve ever known. Her favourite past time was to play card games with us, and watch the re-runs of Taiwanese soap opera. She conversed only in TeoChew, and given my inability to fully express myself in TeoChew, we mutually agreed that PR is the most difficult profession to explain or understand, and I’m actually a sales promoter.
I believe that her passing without pain is a blessing in disguise. She left everything she had in two small bags. So, even in her passing, she is still taking me to school in terms of inventory management.
My grandma will be missed. But, we are glad that she gets to reunite with my grandpa after nearly 30 years of separation. Besides, during what seems to be the time to mourn one's loss, I now realised that I'm an uncle to 12 kids.
The family just concluded the third day of her viewing. 11 hours later, she will be buried next to my grandpa. Grandma, 一路走好, 我们来生再继祖孙缘.
Friday, 3 December 2010
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
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?
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?
Monday, 29 November 2010
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.
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.
Friday, 13 August 2010
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..
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..
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