Slightly not so super

At 10:11:16AM (GMT+8), the first Superbowl commercial link came in from one of my colleagues. Good idea, good timing, not wonderfully groundbreaking, but entertaining (hey look, it’s Spider-Pig!) because it’s The Simpsons.

On this year’s batch of commercials: some were entertaining spots with a slight twist at the end, some were entertaining and put a slight smile on your face, and some were entertaining but had predictable humour, and some, I thought, were kinda lame… But I’ve not seen all the spots yet, so maybe there’s some 2010 1984 that I missed. Otherwise… hmm…

Still, to do one commercial which will air on the Superbowl… that’s something for the resumé and something most of us can only dream about. The cost of running one 30-second spot during the Superbowl is US$2.8 million (down from last year’s US$3million) — many times the entire media and production budget of many brands here. Maybe one of us will be able to make something out of Spider-Pig. Super.

Late one afternoon

I was brainstorming with my colleague today and it was one of those nice times when work felt like hanging out with old friends (we’re ageing fogies) who have the same interest (we used to cycle together, we like photography, we are foodies) and are on the same wavelength (both writers, both cornier than Iowa) (actually no, he’s cornier by far). So, we were brainstorming for ideas for a pitch on a luxe retail fashion project when he suddenly randomly, absent-mindedly said, “They put two non-luxury brand types on a fashion account.” And I replied, “It’s okay. I’m working on obesity, anti-smoking and sex.” And then we laughed very loudly for a very long time.

UK ads in a nut(case)shell

118 guys. Skoda cake. Hamlet cigars combover guy. Bravia bunnies. Bravia clown. Tango. Harvey Nics moth and bulb. Levi’s mousehead. Reebok belly. Guinness rhythm of life cavemen. Heineken trash guys. Peugeot cardboard man. Le Barran Chicken. Levi’s kung-fu. Levi’s break free. Cadbury’s eyebrows. The UK Health Council. Guinness not-everything-in-black-and-white-makes-sense cycling fish. John Smith Extra Smooth. Harvey Nics Scotsman. Bird’s Eye Fish Fingers. Honda dream the impossible dream. Ford Sportka pigeon. Citroen transformer. Bravia bouncy balls. Dunlop tires. Wrapper ad. Apple 1984. Cadbury Gorilla. Heineken bobby. Love radio station. Guinness surfer. Stella Artois ice skating padre. VW Polo King Kong. And I know I missed a lot more.

Green, orange and lucky

I was at dinner with a friend the other day and there was a pair of Mandarin oranges on the table. He said they were given out during Chinese New Year as a lucky symbol because, side by side, they looked like the figure 8, which was a symbol of good luck because bā in Mandarin, or “batt” Cantonese, sounds like fā or ”fatt”.

Not really. At least not that I know of. If that’s the word going around right now, then it’s recent development, probably something created by orange sellers out of their coincidence of its appearance to sell more oranges.

The significance of the pair of Mandarin oranges does have its origins in Cantonese rhyming though. With its bright orange colours, its name “gam” rhymes with the word for gold.

Similarly, kumquats are a symbol for wealth and prosperity because when they are fruiting, the tiny citrus look like bountiful gold coins. Very auspicious.

The pussy willow, yín lĭu in Mandarin or “yin lou” in Cantonese, sounds like “yin liang” or money. Having these plants in your home during Chinese New Year is inviting wealth and abundance into your home.

A new plant I saw at the nursery this year is the Chinese Yellow Banana. Some refer to it as luò dì kāi huā, which has the auspicious meaning of bearing abundance and being fruitful.

Lucky or not, it looks like an alien plant that can devour small dogs.

I’ll settle for my money tree, or jīn qían shù. Directly translated into English, that’s “golden money tree”.

The belief is that if the plant bears flowers while in your home, you will be on a lucky stread and may strike the lottery. That may explain why these plants are frequently decorated with those furry red ribbons which might resemble flowers — to signify that the money tree is in bloom.

The studio in my office had one plant. And each time they struck 4D, they would add one ribbon to the plant. (I don’t know how they picked their numbers, they had a few methods, but one of them was using my Magic 8-Ball, which I loaned one of the desktop artists who found it an amusing thing, and which I never got back.)

I bought ten strings of those furry red ribbons for my money tree, which looks mighty handsome in its terracotta red pot.

And then I bought a lottery ticket.

Love green

I like green. I like lush. Nature always lift my spirits up. Anywhere green is my happy place.

So it was when Sunday evening my friend called and said let’s do our annual visit to the nurseries to get our Lunar New Year festive plants, I said okay — even though I was drained by my flight in that late afternoon that would have been short but got delayed and then spent over half an hour circling the skies because we couldn’t land because the airport was being extra strict and taking extra security measures on all flights that jammed the runways because of a big gig in town.

The way the last two weeks have been operating, I don’t know when I’ll find the chance to step away from routine to visit the nurseries. And I didn’t want to risk a last minute mad scramble which happened before.

It’s a simple mini-spree. I don’t need the fancy kumquats (or even if I do, it’ll be a small pot) or the hyacinth or narcissus bulbs that don’t last beyond the holidays in our tropical weather (but they are so pretty though).

I usually just get a bunch of pussy willow for home. And maybe some simple fresh flowers.

This year, I also needed a new pot for my money tree, which I had bought two weeks earlier at the supermarket (because my old money tree — which this friend had bought for me last year (!) because he knew I’ve been wanted to buy a money tree and he saw that they were on sale — died when my mum over-watered it.) (Argh. No wonder this year no bonus.)

My friend got a pot of kumquats for his office. It’s amazing how many types of kumquats one of the nurseries was offering: Dragon Heart Lime, Four Seasons Lime, Mandarin Oranges…

We didn’t hit the flower chiller, even though I remembered to bring my sweater. It was still too early; the Lunar New Year is still about a fortnight away (which explained the full moon in the sky). Excuse for another visit soon, maybe.

Anyway, it’s a joy. Long ago my friend and I would escape the office to go visit Ikea’s plant section (though Ikea plants always die from one reason or another).

Or drive around in his parents’ car to patches of jungle looking for interesting flora. Or surreptitiously pluck water lilies from an open pond in the dead of the night at 2am.

This was back when we had just started work and money shouldn’t be spent on something indulgent like plants.

Once we went across the Causeway in search of cheaper plants. Only to be told at the checkpoint were weren’t supposed to bring soil into the country. Bah.

He helped me pick out my pomegranate plant at home. (No Chinese home is Chinese unless you have a pomegranate plant.) When his office moved, I helped him pick out his office plants — he got some gorgeous yuccas, which he placed in a sunless corner and the last time I visited his office, they looked almost dead (sim tiah…).

We still visit the nurseries now and then. When time permits.

I bought me my bunch of pussy willow and a red and black terracotta pot for my supermarket grade money tree. (HongBao Jackpot Toto, here I come!) Saw some crazy plants too, like this one on the left. I think it really should be renamed Einsteinus Hairfoliagus Plantus. Wish I could buy a pot for the office, but I can’t. No space. Bah.

The Wolf Moon

The full moon that occurs in January, the first of the year, is called the wolf moon, a name that hails from Native American lore, which also gives every full moon a name, and is said to be the biggest and brightest full moon of the year. Not sure how that fits in Chinese lore, which says that’s the full moon of the eighth lunar month. But right now, I am just too exhausted to find out.

And it’s only Monday.

This says a lot

“Please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.” Conan’s farewell speech on his last Tonight Show sums up life in the media and creative field, an industry filled with hopeless romantics and eternal optimists. (Riiight.)

Mind maps save the day

Mind maps saved my entrance exams years ago. They also can save my Monday. Never mind that I forgot to bring my folder to work and all I had were two enlarged copies of my mind maps, never mind that one teammate had to go on a photo shoot and another called in sick, I had my mind maps, godammit.

Now I need some killer lines to save the week.

D’oh

08:46hrs. You know which direction your week is heading when you step into the office on Monday morning and realise you left your folder of work at home.

(But it’s okay, it’s one of the fashion projects and I already made big printouts last week of the mindmaps of the two main directions we want to pursue in all their full-colour glory and the rest is in my air-filled head. Hee.)

What a week… in Hollywood

“Oh, man. It’s been some week.” Tom Hanks said as he swaggered on stage wearing sunglasses and holding two glasses. “Around my house, they call this ‘Daddy’s Little Reward’.” He passes Conan a glass of golden liquid on the rocks. They share a knowing half-laugh-half-sigh I-feel-for-you moment — everyone knows what’s been going on recently, especially escalating in the past week — and Conan takes a sip. ”This is cream soda” “It’s how I relax, Coco. It’s how I say goodbye to the cares of the day.” “I think it’s diet cream soda.”

Hanks then leads the crowd in a long round of “Coco! Coco!” By the way, Hanks is apparently the one who coined the Coco name during his guest appearance on the second episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.

I caught the final two episodes on Thursday and Friday nights (the 21 and 22 January 2010 ones), of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien over the weekend (that’s when they show it here).

It was the last couple of shows right after Conan and NBC agreed and signed the exit deal. Seven months ago, I caught the first episode. I was surprised years ago when NBC said they were going to put Conan in the Tonight Show seat after Leno. I like both, but I have to say Leno’s style is more mainstream. Conan is more, I don’t know how to describe it, college humour. More clever? More esoteric?

Let me describe it this way: It was a colleague who first raved about Conan to me. He studied journalism in the Pacific Northwest, he reads like how fish drink, knows all the best modern writers, pundits and commentators. He is a geek. His thinking and even his mannerisms —random dances and bouts of squeaky talk — seemed to mimic the Harvard alum comedian. Conan seemed to appeal to guys like him. As for Leno, any auntie in Ang Mo Kio (or my mum) can understand his humour. You get what I mean.

Didn’t the network see this? Did they expect him to change his style? Sell out? What? They can’t expect the same numbers to continue overnight from Leno. Or, give the guy some time to build up a following as most shows need to. And not screw him like that. Sheesh. No wonder people are mad. People get screwed enough by top executives and the powers-that-be and blah blah blah. The people don’t want to see other people get screwed either, especially not their favourite comedian, out of the highest dream job a comedian can have, that this particular comedian would have worked all his life for. (I would be more outraged if I had more time, but really, I can relate to how mad Conan and his crew would be.)

Anyhoo, I’m not gonna write about the Conan-NBC debacle — there’s lots on the Internet about it. Or the backlash from fans; that’s all over the Internet as well.

What’s fun to watch is the fun everyone’s having with this mess, even as they wrap up the show. The satirical Greatest Moments-style recaps of since last September. And how, like a scorned and vengeful girlfriend, they’ve been charging crazy expensive purchases to NBC, like a Bugatti Veyron Mouse, the champion of the Kentucky Derby wearing a mink Snuggie, and a skeleton of a giant sloth from the Smithsonian spraying Beluga caviar on a Picasso original. Funny. Normal people just get to steal toilet paper and staplers. Talk about ORD Mood. (Sorry, local joke.)

It’s nice to see how the industry’s best rallied around Conan.

“Seems like only yesterday. How much for the couch?” Robin Williams quipped in the second last episode.

Special mention: Steve Carrell conducting the exit interview was hilarious.

The last show was a blast, with Will Ferrell, who was there at the first show, making a guest appearance.

Well, at least Conan’s week wraps up with a $45 million cheque.

I need a cream soda…

What a week

What a week. Exhaustion. Frustration. Absolutely drained. This probably described more than a few of us at the office at the end of the week. Our brains are so fried. We’re juggling so many things, and at the side, someone — correction, several people — are throwing more things into the act. There’s so much to do. And this is not even taking into consideration the other projects that I want to work on. And we now have a list of mandatory in-house projects to complete. There are just not enough hours in the day. Sometimes it’s not just about the sheer amount of work there is, but also the process of getting it done. The battles fought just take so much out of you. The going back to the drawing board. The compromises. The hitting a brick wall repeatedly. The bad news coming in from all quarters. What a week.

But if a 23-day old baby can survive being trapped in rubble for over a week and an 84-year-old woman can be pulled out alive after 10 days, what’s a crappy week, even if it’s one fraught with setbacks and bad news.

Support disaster relief at www.google.com/haitiearthquake

I wonder if he wondered at that moment what lay ahead the rest of his life

So

Today I tried to take a passport photo. Again. I’m so unphotogenic it’s ridiculous. Phhbbt. (I’m more a gorgeous-in-real-life type of person.)

Option A

I saw this on a friend’s update which linked to design site which linked to someone’s blog which linked to a Tumblr page somewhere. I’ve seen the signs before, there are a lot of them like this in places that could be anywhere on the planet. Maybe they’re all by one person. Or maybe it was by many different people posting them up online. This one seems to be what’s happening in the world today, whether on purpose, by accident or from apathy.

Really?!

Avatar? Really? Really?! Like, seriously?!!

I mean, the 3D effects were awesome and everything in the book was thrown at the film — zero gravity, digital holograms, water shots, glow-in-the-dark flora, psychedelic fauna, floating pollen, fire, wind, rain, falling ash, you name it. They sing to African tribal music and dance the chak-chak dance. Plot-wise… it’s The Last Samurai. Pochahontas. Dances With Wolves. The King and I. I thought we stopped stuff like that at the end of the ’90s. At best, it is good as sci-fi but crap as a film. Has the Hollywood Foreign Press lost its collective mind?!

It’s good to be back

It was the second session of the year and it was good. It was also quite hot (but not as scorching as June) and we got a little crispy.

We resumed training last week after stopping for the holidays. It was kinda a bummer when we cancelled our last training of the year the week before Christmas — over five years dragonboat and I’ve never seen training cancel while we’re all standing at the clubhouse by the water. But it was raining heavily that afternoon and someone actually said, “Whoever’s coxing today shouldn’t stand too tall.” The lightning was sporadic but we didn’t chance it anyway and went for coffee.

But now we’re back with a vengeance. There are new changes and directives in the team and Coach means it. Training started out simple with group rowing. Then he broke the news with glee — row non-stop until the Irish arrive. (IN case you are wondering, that’s the end of our training when Coach’s next team meets us out in the water and he transfers over.) Or forty-five minutes. (Thank goodness, coz the Irish were late that day.) It’s funny because I went for dinner with K, and her bf K2 was laughing coz we were walking like a couple of 90-year-olds (but felt like a couple of 20-year-olds).

It’s going to be an interesting season this year.

Last week was a stupid week

Last week was a stupid week.

It started with the hot topic around the watercooler being how good it must be to be rich, that even when serving in prison you could lead a good life. We were referring to the women’s prison in Jakarta where privileged inmates had cells that were more condo than jail. Acting on a tip-off, a task force visited the prison unannounced and found one of their key tai-tai inmates not in her cell — she was in the adjacent room having a facial. She’s got a maid and chauffer. (Chauffeur? Yes, apparently she makes visits outside of the detention centre.) Of course, stories were fabricated fast and furious. Gadgets, exercise machines and karaoke machines were swiftly removed. Prisoners were swiftly moved. “The room was our rec room. Now we have no place to teach handcraft.” (Handcraft? And rish breaking a manicured nail? Riiight.) ”They might as well be under house arrest,” my friend said. The reply: “Not really, because house arrest for them would have been a 50,000 square foot mansion.” But the authorities have taken action.

I spent most of the middle of the week arguing with my co-workers. I wasn’t arguing so much as I was exasperated. I was a little bit chewing up the junior girl but it really wasn’t her fault (why is it always the seniors send the juniors to do things like this). “I’m not mad at you, I’m just saying that we brought these questions up over a week ago. What you want is not wrong, we can do it this way, sure. But we asked this last week and this was your answer — and now we’re changing everything because you guys can’t agree on what you want after all at 7.30 the night before the presentation?” And across the table one of the kids was flashing me a thumbs up because the only reason I was there was because his colleagues on this project had already been arguing for over an hour on the same issue which was when they called for reinforcements (because now I had to write stuff for the changes being made, on top of the writing I was already rushing out). That and they rarely ever see me in this state. Phbt. But work is work, I was still on the phone with the girl at 1am answering questions for her presentation deck.

Of course, all of this is nothing when Haiti happened. Pictures of death and destruction. A man not begging peace-keeping forces to take action, but the operator of a bulldozer to move some rubble so he can take out his family members’ bodies. Bulldozers not carrying rubble but nameless, identity-less corpses and dumping them into a truck to be brought presumably to a mass grave. Go home and turn on BBC or CNN and it’s similarly vivid imagery. Dump trucks pouring rubble and bodies into a mass grave. Overcrowded hospitals with no medication and drugs, doing the best they can, which is resorting to “Civil War medicine”. Even as I’m typing this, anarchy is breaking out. And the next big threat is disease breaking out because of the lack of food and water and hygiene and all those dead bodies. One can’t begin to fathom what’s going on there.

In many ways, last week was a stupid week.

Red Cross
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Help the Children
Or any one of the many aid agencies out there.

Ding-ding-ding!

Here’s a picture of a thresher shark. Just because.

Eat my gravel

There was gravel on my still-almost-brand new shoes, inside, and inside my socks. There was gravel on my sweater. There was gravel on my tee shirt under my sweater even though it was all zipped up. There was gravel on my capri pants, in my capri pants, and in my undies. There was gravel on my face, despite the helmet and visor. At one point one grain got into my left eye. There was gravel in my ears. There was gravel in my mouth and I was spitting out water like it was a dragonboat race.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

We’ve been going go-karting for years. Sometimes it was with office friends. Sometimes with dragonboat friends. Sometimes it’s both, since they were the same thing at one time. There was a track across the Causeway, but we heard that they’ve closed down or moved. But we’ve found another track in Melaka – Melaka International Motorports Circuit (MIMC), and one that’s more systematic.

You can do a 10-minute run on the track, or purchase a package. We got the Expert deal, which consists of 30 laps broken down into: 5 warm-up laps followed by three races of 7, 8 and 10 laps. You’ll need a minimum of six racers to do a Package race. The ideal was eight in a race; we had nine.

After some delay where they looked for a ninth go-kart and when we went for a tea break in the nearby town of Durian Tunggol, we were good to go. Shower caps are provided, in case you find the helmets in less than mint condition. Or if you’re cool-conscious like us, you can bring your own bandana.

Then came the ritual of selecting our go-karts. I don’t know how the guys chose theirs (with good measure of trash talking one another, apparently) but I just headed for lucky number seven. No particular reason. It was the first number that popped to mind.

Dusted the seat of sand. Climbed in. Got comfy. Familiarised with the grip of the steering wheel. That was when the official saw that I couldn’t really reach the brakes and gave me a pillow to sit on. Perfect.

I started seventh on the grid in the warm-up laps but did well enough — I even lapped BJ — to come in third, after Eam and R, the traditional winners whenever we went go-karting. I normally could out-drive the other girls, but somehow not the guys.

The track had gravel all over and grit bounced off the helmet visor as we drove. It even got in under the visor and into our mouths, so we had to drive with our mouths closed (with exception from the occasional curse from the guys).

The first race started. I was skidding and drifting around the chicanes. I was driving with a mission. When I rounded the last bend, I floored the throttle and shot down the entire stretch at full speed. There was even a soundtrack playing in my head. A mix between Coldplay Viva la Vida and the Speed Racer theme song. Go figure. (I just saw it on HBO the week before.)

And then the most amazing thing happened. I overtook Eam. And shortly after, Renga. It was so exciting. That’s never happened before. It was also quite pressuring. The music was playing louder in my head now, especially when the guy held out the “Last Lap” sign. But I had to shut it out. Not a time to get cocky. If I made a mistake, the guys would never let me live it down.

Came in first in the first race. Woo-hoo!

And the second. Yay!

Luke tried to block me in the first race but I snuck past him on the inside of one of the bends. He tried it again in the second race, and at a bend where K had stalled at the side of the track, but I managed to squeeze in between her go-kart and Luke’s without so much as a backwards glance. I lapped BJ twice in the second race. Whee!

And then during the break before the third race, it started to rain. The track became more slippery than a greasy fishball. I was careful at the start, but I spun off the track at the fourth bend. When R drove past, I swear he was laughing gleefully at me, and to the guys behind.

I looked around and tried to signal for help from one of the officials, but help was not forthcoming. I didn’t even think they could see me in the downpour. I can’t go down like this! I can’t!

No time to waste punching fist at sky dramatically, shouting: “Why?!”

I dragged my go-kart back onto the track (Damn, it’s heavy!) praying the whole time that the engine wouldn’t stall coz I wouldn’t know what to do then.

Luckily it didn’t. I floored the throttle and got back into the race. It was a very Hollywood moment. I could still win this race.

Now, I was really pissed. Now, I was really driving, albeit more carefully, with a mission. One by one, I overtook the others. BJ, Yas, Luke, K, K2. Now, the rain had turned into a proper storm and the puddles around the hairpins turned into swimming pools.

Water sprayed behind our go-karts. Copious amounts fountained in from the bottom of the go-kart. It gushed onto us while we drove. It splashed onto the visor, inside the visor, everywhere.

There was so much water, at one point I was spitting water out like it was a dragonboat race. Yes, puddle water got into our mouths too. I could feel water streaming into all of my clothes, into my inner clothes, but we were all already so wet, there was no point feeling conscious about getting drenched. Everyone continued swimming through the water in our go-karts. It was like the race had turned into a biathlon event. Water would splash onto the visor rendering me blind and the go-kart would skid under me but the deathgrip on the steering wheel made sure I was still in control and that I finished the race.

In the end, most importantly, I went from pole to last place, to completing the final race in a respectable podium finish of second place, after R. (Eam crashed out; he says the splash from R’s go-kart stalled his engine and he couldn’t get it started after. Pfft, excuses. Hee.)

It was the most fun we’ve all had in ages. R says he couldn’t stop laughing like a kid the entire ten laps of the third race. All the guys were psyched. And promptly went for another round. THe girls gave it a miss. Sat in the stands for a while, was trying to get one tiny, tricky piece of gravel stuck between my back teeth, then went to get a headstart on cleaning up.

I didn’t bring any spare clothes, so had to clean up what I had on. I literally had to remove every single article of clothing I was wearing, wash the gravel off as much as possible, wring the water out, and put it back on.

The track doesn’t have showers, which meant I used the hose in the ladies’ toilet, which, if you are familiar with toilets here — yes, that hose. If you are not familiar with toilets here — don’t ask.

Oddly enough, I’ve been in rougher situations. The toilet was relatively clean. I dread to think how gross it would be if it was not. (It would have been nice if the cubicles had hooks to hang my stuff on though.) It’s not Monaco, but things could have been worse.

So there we were, still riding the post-race high. I was cold but for the warm glow of victory. After you add up the points, I was Champion. That’s never been heard of. The guys will deny this when we get back, R protests as he says the last race was “winner takes all”, but they were so sweet to buy me dinner as agreed before the race. Sure, dinner was $10 per head, but it’s the thought I-won-you-lost-nanny-nanny-boo-boo that counts. (I’m just kidding. Hee.)

After we left the racetrack, we spent a shivering hour trying to get into town so we could buy some cheap and dry clothes, and get out of our wet ones.

Sadly, there wasn’t time to take in Jonker Street and the old town of Melaka — it was too crowded and jammed anyways — so we’ll have to return to Melaka again sometime. Maybe this time we’ll try to stay a night.

That looks cold

Britain’s suffering through a deep freeze right now, its harshest winter in 30 years. Much of Europe wasn’t spared either in this new wave that just hit over the weekend, the cold snap sweeping across France, Germany and the region, leaving travellers stranded, causing auto accidents and even death. Even Granada, Spain, received some snowfall. Brrr.

I heard someone say that temperatures in some parts have hit -30°. “Doesn’t matter whether that’s in Celsius or Fahrenheit, because at that level, you just need to know that it’s too cold.”

For the record, -30°C = -22°F.