chaka chaka

i’ve always prided myself on my tidy finances. sure there isn’t any money in the bank, but i’m not stuck in a vicious cycle of revolving credit. 18% APR and compounded interest? banks are evil.

but today i’ve changed my mind. i still believe them evil, nasty things, but perhaps they might be a little *ahem* necessary.

why the change of heart? well:

• LEICA F2.0 24mm wide angle lens
• full manual operation
• HD video (1280×720 pixels 24fps)

panasonic lumix DMC-LX3. need i say more?

damage: USD499.95 ~ RM1700

then there’s also blackbird, fly.

• twin reflex lens
• 35mm film
• and come on, look at it!

damage: USD175 ~ RM595

it’s nothing a little month to month saving can’t handle, but do i really want to wait 2-3 months for a camera? i want it now! and then there’s the trouble with online shopping. no card, no goods. it’s discrimination against people like me, really. i still need a card to facilitate the purchase of USD8 worth of expired films (which is a fucking steal). yummy.

there’s an HSBC credit card booth a mere walk down the street at the horrendous mid valley mamak which i’d intended to drop by later today. but now ah hiong is telling me how his FIVE credit cards nearly ruined his life.

[edit] The *Click* Shop is having a Black vs. White promotion – Blackbird, fly + Vivitar Wide and Slim for only RM500 until 30th June. feel dizzy.

food poisoning keeping me awake so i’m typing out a new layout. as usual, my horrible colour sense is killing me.

green? blue? pink? HELP!

some time ago, aunty nikki was telling me about her friend in beijing who found some awesomely-priced ndsls (nintendo dual screen lites, for the uninitiated). i immediately thought of al, who hasn’t yet succumbed to the mario kart orgies. made a call and asked her if she wanted one for approximately 440, ok, go.

so the thing arrived a couple of weeks ago and i pass it to al. just as she’s about to jizz her pants playing rhythm heaven, the damn screen stops registering and juan notices that the buttons on al’s unit stick out more. uh fucking oh…

my palms started sweating uncontrollably and i gunned it back home with FAKE PIRATED SHIT DS in tow to check.

got chee heng to help snap some photos. and showed al and juan both for comparison. our conclusion? we are impressed. and scared. but very impressed by the uber subtle differences.

the red one is an original; blue’s the A-grade fake.

the casing on the fake one [left] stuck out like killer nips on a cold day.

differences between the printing on the back is the hardest to tell.

the fake printing has a slightly el cheapo feel to it. check out the “Lite” font which, like the rest of the copy,  is slightly thicker. this applies for the logotype on the packaging as well.

the stylus on the counterfeit [bottom] was also harder to remove.

it wasn’t glaringly obvious, though the fake ds didn’t feel as solid or well made. the giveaway wasn’t so much the general detailing as it was the rougher finishing. i was quite blown away that aunty nikki, my dear technologically-impaired aunt, suspected it wasn’t quite *ahem* the real deal.

so baby, aroha and i tagged along with al and juan to digital mall last sunday to pick up real ones which cost only about RM580 these days (excluding the limited edition colours which are still fucking pricey – RM630).

moral of the story? china fucking rocks.

was feeling all hot and bothered by phantom hair scratching at my nape and tickling the tips of my ears. so i skipped lunch (anorexic whore) and popped by jantzen salon (thanks to the misleading “20+” signage).

got this guy ryan who only muttered a very cringeworthy “i’ll cut it short and make it yeah” line and nothing else. no small talk. no getting to know you questions to suss out my personality. no singing to ABBA. no being all fabulous and shit.

i know. am going through severe ming withdrawal.

anyway, thought the cut was… nice.

was pretty late when i snapped this and i felt as tired as i look, but i needed a picture of the cut for reference the next day.

what i particularly liked was the little tail thing at the back.  (check out my awesome bedframe against my awesome black-hand-painted wall in my awesome room.)

think this black sides/red top palette is my thing. 2 stylists, 2 similar cuts. coincidence? i think not.

godamnit. this vanity is all nur’s fault.  i was never this concerned over my tresses until you introduced me to ming!

you really want to know the difference between working in an ATL agency versus an interactive one?

in ATL, no one logs in to their facebook, no one checks their work mail, no one’s even heard of twitter, and general managers think BLOGS ARE THE NEW HOT THING.

here, everyone is twittering, there are group msn bitching sessions, everyone reads everyone else’s blog in full view of each other, and they’re all cyber-stalkers (hi, jook).

i feel so at home here.

so there haven’t been any quality posts in a while (we’ll just egotisticaly assume there were any to begin with). and i believe it’s due to an influx of happenings rather than a lack of it. but nyeaaah it’s not stuff that deserves to be shared with the likes of kimberly de silva type stalkers.

last week, the karen wong invited me and a few other colleagues to guest assess some student work at TOA. not only was i super honoured, i was completely gobsmacked. and then smug. oh, if only those extra-chromosomed high school “educators” could see me now. the budak kurang siuman, judging student work. HA! so what if i almost failed sejarah? i’m livin’ it up now, baby!

so anyway. i was having a little struggle, internally, about the kind of comments to make. sure, we’re all there to provide an advertising perspective on creatives and messaging, but how much commercialism were we supposed to impose on them? do we kill their creativity now? comment everything to death?

i didn’t want to say much or contribute heavy killer ad vibes into the room. i think karen’s friend yen sie needed no help. i did disagree with the rather client-y comments though. jook’s “client may not like this” statement was still palatable. what really threw me off was the “LOGO NOT BIG ENOUGH” sermon.

you have to start with work you’re happy with, work that you like, and then dumb it down as a compromise to the usual client feedback. if you start with a logo covering up 80% of your creative, there’s no where to go from there ‘cept art direction hell.

it was a good session for me. it’s all very nice and easy to critique work not your own, but i’m sure a lot of us are, from time to time, guilty of straying too far off brief or not keeping communication clear enough or hiding the big message under too many layers. it was a useful reminder.

one of the students (my personal favourite) posed a question about copywriting for ATL and how it differs from writing for the web. never good on my feet, i gave a rather shoddy answer, which i’d now like to append.

it was hard for me to find a clear distinction between “ATL” and “online” simply because i haven’t been doing just above-the-line work. it completely slipped my goldfish memory that i’ve also lived through a fair bit of torturous BTL and event work. just like working in an online medium, you plan out touchpoints and try to work in some consumer interactivity (the starcom job in particular was pretty fun). you think of POSMs which can engage your audience to read, see, touch, think. it’s no different from creating banners for the web. ok, perhaps only in the fact that web banners are infinitely more annoying.  so yeah, i was left stumped for 2 seconds wondering myself “what is the fucking difference?” the difference, i guess, is that you have to work that much harder to get your ad noticed. it’s getting noticed in the millions of pages of www versus being spotted in the 60-page dailies. it’s making use of any and all available real estate i.e. email, dashboards, titlebars, descriptors, RSS summaries, tweets etc. instead of planning just a headline, body and call-to-action in standard full-page spread.

don’t take it as god’s truth though. i’m still learning. :)

as annoyed as i am, and as hateful as some of his comments may be, i still believe that this can not, is not, must not be construed as dreaded “office politics”.

why?

simple.

it’s too blatantly retarded. sure everyone is honing in on the fact that there is a little under-the-table rimming going on. but that aside, come on. making loudspeaker announcements to a group of colleagues over dinner says enough.

office politics is sneaky. it involves a lot of bald-faced lies and skulking about. it takes more than a little fact-juggling and crafty psychological games. most of all, it takes some mental acuity (which he’s clearly lacking).

shorty’s insincere shows of concern, unsuccessful dirt-digging, name-dropping, back-patting and colleague-debasing is so painfully obvious i could cry.

come on, guys, don’t give him that much credit. he ain’t a politician. he just has some insecurities and esteem issues he needs to work out. with doctor phil and oprah.

was just downloading some photos from my phone – photos of noelle’s baby to show our favourite yoni in singapore – and i found some slightly backdated photos from another “brainstorm” session.

awesome jenga is awesome

what’s that tim? a “sports” injury?