Day 232: "Comfort Room", "Wave Theatre" and Terrific Food

Visiting agency offices are always fun. And I mean those creative agencies. They always have funky decor, interesting wall hangings and a super cool attitude about their working environment. Today, the whole day was spent at Saatchi & Saatchi's Guangzhou office. It was my first time there and I loved it!

 

Firstly they have a "comfort room". Which basically means a room with soft flooring like a nursery, a crib (?!), several soft toys that are about my size, those huge spongy bedroom slippers that have cartoon characters on top and a nice seating area that looks like kids' work area. That was super cool! Then they had a wonderful meeting room which they call the Theatre. It definitely had theatre styled seating, with the only differenc being that instead of seating with chairs, they had a formation like waves on the floor. You can just sit on the crest of a wave or at its trough and rest your back against the curve. I had never seen a room like that before so that was also super funky! Only thing was that, after showing us this funky space, they said they are shifting the meeting to a more conventional room because apparently post one hour, all participants in the wave-room usually end up with a backache. OK, not very ergonomically designed then. Still, funky it definitely is! They also had a cafe within the floor which was aptly named Central Perk and which produced a constant flow of drinks and food (including proper meals like Chicken Rice!). As you can see, am thoroughly impressed! And last but not the least, just after lunch, half the folks in the office took out their pillows and went into an unabashed siesta at their desk. Apparently, that's Chinese working culture for you. Who would have thought!

 

After a day of long but productive meeting at this cool place, we did what we do best - have a good team dinner! And man, the food in China has once again taken me by complete surprise! It was AWESOME! I stufffed myself with dim sum - two kinds, fried rice, mushroom dish, a dish of duck with beans and celery, some egg dish, pork, beef, tofu (soyabean curd), an awesome dessert (like really, really awesome) made of "red dates" that looked like light chocolate cake but tasted far better and of course the inevitable green tea which wasnt as great on its own but added to the overall experience! I was satisfied. Truly.

 

So yes, it was a really fun day thanks to the agency's creativity and the chef's creativity! :)

 

768 more to go.

 

 

 

 

Day 231: Two Workouts, One Day

6 July, 2010

 

Firstly let me thank some of the kind readers who read the previous post and pointed out that I have messed up the number of the day (I think I wrote "Day 229" for what's rightfully "Day 230"). Well, the thing is I have no access to my own blog from here in China. In the process of getting its population secured from the blasphemy of wordly news, China has successfully denied my birthright of access to my own dear blog. Which means I can't visit the link and also not blogger.com. However, blogger.com has cleverly given an option whereby you can email blogs to a certain address which will then be automatically published. And "Day 229" or rather, "Day 230" was the first such successful publication of mine. Only catch was that I couldn't visit the site first to check what number I was at the day before (and nope, I couldn't remember this significant detail that had passed just 24 hours prior. Am aging after all). Nor can I go back and edit this whole numbering system until I get back to Singapore on Friday. So yes, thanks, duly noted and shall be repaired within the next 48 hours.

 

OK getting back to 6th July.

 

I had to think a bit about 6th July. I mean, honestly nothing cool happened other than doing a ton of work and attending a string of meetings throughout the day. Much as I love my work and think that it is one of the best things that happened to me, I wouldn't put the above mentioned events under the "beautiful" category.

 

That's when I realized hey wait, I actually did two workouts within one day! OK, fine... maybe "workout" is a stretch but I walked 40 mins in the morning in the gym and then again walked another 40 minutes in the gym in the evening. Now that could easily go under the "beautiful" category because it shows such single-minded dedication to keeping my health at its peak. A dedication which was completely missing the last couple of months. Walking might not be quite the most effective of all excercises, however it is indeed something and am happy to have done something while I am travelling. It makes me less guilty about all that yummilicious food!

 

So yes, it was a good good day!

 

769 more to go (hope the numbers are correct this time).

Day 229: Being Young

5 July, 2010

 

Am currently in Guangzhou for work. I've been here before once and was not a fan of the city. That time, the whole place felt ultra dull. One couldn't see the sun for days and it was raining most of the time. It was one of the rare places that I have personally come across that actually felt "grey" like the ones you read about in Victorian novels. However, good news is that this time when we landed, things were looking bright and sunny. I mean really bright and sunny. Those who complain of Singapore being hot, should really make their way to Guangzhou. This place is HOT. Like H.O.T. Do you get what I mean? Let me repeat - It is Freaking Hot!!!

 

In spite of the above mentioned heat, I did find the day interestingly beautiful.

 

In my line of work, we do a fair bit of consumer work - sometimes on men, sometimes on women, sometimes on younger people, soemtimes on older people etc. So this time, the turn was for younger people. After doing some consumer understanding of youngsters these days, the team whose average age is not less than 35 decided that we should also live the "young life" for a day.

 

And what does that mean in Guangzhou? Firstly, go shopping at Tee-mall - the only mall that seems to be around. My manager says that every time she has been in Guangzhou, she has been taken to the Tee-mall. So that must be a pretty happening place. So the whole bunch of us (around 15) walked around Tee-mall. Then we had an excellent dinner, which I guess is not specifically "young" but still is worth mentioning since I usually don't take to the food in China, but this was really good stuff. The trick is not to be fussy and ask what you are eating, otherwise you will end up feeling sick. So as long as you focus on the taste, you will be OK.

 

And last but not the least, came....wait for it....  Clubbing - The Ultimate Youth Experience!

 

Now, I am not a club person at all. But in the spirit of teamwork, I tagged along. Interestingly, instead of drinking alcohol and dancing around (which is what I assume clubbing is supposed to be), we sat in a karaoke room inside the club. I don't really know which moron came up with this whole karaoke business idea but all it does is give the people with zero singing talent a chance to screech and pretend they are celebrities, while the fellow karaoke-ers cringe in their seats, waiting for their turn so that they can take revenge for what has been afflicted on them. Still, it was quite an experience watching and being part of the "Let's be young" gang. So there was karaoke, games, alcohol and everything but dancing. I was a silent spectator most of the time mainly because I couldn't understand the complicated chinese dice games they were playing and had no interest in demonstrating my super-cool singing talent amongst such a big group.

 

But I did have a good time. The meeting prior to the "being young" party was good, the food was great, the whole experience was rather enjoyable. So here's to all the young-at-heart ones!  

 

771 more to go.

Day 229: Mexican and Lebanese

I had a decent day of shoot today. I say "decent" and not "good" because we managed to complete only a part of the shoot while the rest had to be postponed due to unpredictable weather conditions.

So the unpredictable weather conditions resulted in unexpected free time on my hands. So the hubby and I set out to do what we love doing the most - Eat good food. We went to Holland Village, a caucasian habited area of Singapore that we used to frequent during our university time because it was the only "cool" place near campus during those days. But the cool place is currently very far from our home and we haven't been there for ages. So we decided to go check it out.

First we went to the Mexican restaurant El Patio. Now, if you like Mexican food or for that matter any food at all, you MUST try the Pepper Chicken Fajita there. It is like YUMMMMM. Am not that great a fan of Mexican food, but I found this one Absolutely Terrific. Then we went to Al Humra, a Lebanese place. There we ordered a kebab soupish thingy with some kinda flavoured rice (from that description you can make out that I have completely forgotten the name of the dish). Now, this one was also tasty no doubt. But what was super cool about the place was that the complimentary starter that they serve are olives (black and green), pickles and carrots. I love olives and the ones I had today at Al Humra top any kind of olive I have had before. The black olives especially were mouth-watering. And so were the pickle which was so apt for my tangy-taste-loving taste buds.

In short, the gap in having a satisfying shoot was made up with a whole load of delicious food. All in all, a tasty day!

771 more to go.

Day 228: Babies!

People say working with children can be the hardest thing. You ask them to come here and they would readily go in the opposite direction. You ask them to keep quiet and they would shriek at the top of their voices. You ask them to say something and they would go mum as if they never learnt how to speak. In other words, the unpredictability is tremendous. So working with babies, who don't even understand what we are trying to achieve with them, leads the unpredictability to a different level altogether.

Today, for the first time ever, I had to work with a baby for the film. This 5-month old is the youngest member of the team and today he debuted in front of the camera. The scene required the mom-character to hold him for a while first and then the dad-character to hold him as well.

Needless to say, the baby found the whole bunch of us absolutely unworthy of his smiles and the other cute things babies do, and instead cried his way through the shoot. At one point the dad-character said "Man...he is crying!! I mean, there are like tears and all!" I told him my best guess is that babies do produce tears when they cry, much like us adults.

But interestingly, the dad-character was the one who better handle the baby while the mom-character almost looked as if she is gonna drop him at any point, leaving me biting my lips in tense anticipation. And on top the shoot that was meant to be wrapped up in an hour went on for about 3 hours or so... mainly because the baby needed some food or his nanny or his mummy or his beauty sleep or all of the above.

Anyway, am glad to let you know that I managed to get all the shots that I wanted and it was as successful a shoot as it could have been. We got some excellent shots whenever the baby decided to take a break from crying. At other times when the baby kept on crying, the pressure fell on the mom and dad characters to act really well so we could distract the audience from the crying baby. That strategy seemed to have worked and we got some excellent shots then too. So all in all, we worked well with the unpredictability of babies.

So here is to the baby and the interesting experience he gave the team today!

772 more to go.

Day 227: The Fun is Back!

2 July, 2010

For two weeks now, I had not done any work related to the film. No shoot. No edit. Not even watching the footage. It's been so crazy at office and with travelling etc., that film was a long way off my mind, except for some never-ending scheduling work I always seem to have.

But today I ended up with some unexpected time on my hands. A meeting ended three hours earlier than expected and so I used that time to sit down on the edit.

And that was interesting because after the last two weeks, I think I was almost beginning to feel disconnected with the film, because everything else was so overwhelming. I was not doing the "fun" part of it, which is visualizing it and executing it via shoots and edits. Instead the only film related work was scheduling and logistics and rescheduling and logistics and rescheduling and did I mention logistics?! And these things get really tiring when the "fun" part is not visible.

But editing for a few hours brought back just that. The FUN of making the film. I love the way the scenes seem to come together. These are scenes that I had seen in my head several months ago and now am seeing them on the screen! That's an incredible feeling! Whichever way the film turns out eventually, the experience of working on it is simply fantastic.

So there. The FUN is back! And now am looking forward to tomorrow's shoot!

773 more to go.

Day 226: Pyjama Party

1 July, 2010

We had a pyjama party. Well, almost.

By "we", I mean my team at work. We had a meeting in office until midnght. A global call using video conferencing and all that cool stuff connecting people from seven different sites. And it was an effective meeting.

But to add some fun to it, my manager suggested that we should bring pyjamas to the meeting to drive the point that it is indeed very late in Asia.

Well, it so happened that only she bothered to get her pyjamas. By the time I received the note about it, it was too late and the rest in the team were a bit embarrassed I guess. Still, it was too much fun! There was a ton of food and drinks and it was indeed a pyjama party, minus the pyjamas for the rest of us.

I must say the 7pm - 12am meeting that I was dreading and cribbing about, passed by without much of a problem at all! In fact, if it's this fun, I don't mind a few more!

774 more to go.