3 posts tagged “david lian”
You know Murphy's Law? The one where everything that could possibly go wrong must go wrong, and at the wrong time? Well, Murphy had a field day yesterday on my life. Here's what happened:
I was due to fly out to Penang for media training. The flight was scheduled for 10:45 a.m. I woke up at 9:30 a.m. Ouch! So I showered and got dressed in a record 7 minutes. Ran downstairs and convinced John to speed-drive me to KL Sentral and hopped onto the train as soon as I could. I reached the airport late, and missed the flight. So, out came the wallet and RM 75 to pay for the next flight.
Thankfully, I reached Penang pronto and was able to rush over to the clients place on time. Or so I thought. The cab driver didn't exactly know where the client's place was and we spent the better part of 30 minutes looking for the client's place. I got there late about 10 minutes.
Now comes the cool part: in my rush to get off the cab, I dropped my wallet in the cabbie. When the guard asked me for my IC, my fingers reached into my pocket and drew a blank. SHOCK!
By now, the cab had sped off and I'm left in the lurch without an IC.
Good thing I knew the people inside. I was let in after a call from "upstairs", but that didn't solve the wallet problem. But nevermind, client matters first. The training was midway and a wallet crisis wasn't exactly a great excuse to stop proceedings.
Now, media training involves a fair bit of camera work. Basically, you record the client in a mock interview, watch him goof off, and then point out his mistakes. I'd say on a scale of 1 - 10 for importance, the camera is rates a 10. That day, the camera died. Not good.
Fortunately, all bad things can be turned good. So, I take this opportunity to highlight the Nokia N80's camera video recording capabilities. Whipping out my slick N80, I set it on record mode and demonstrate why MP4 playback rocks.
So, media training taken care of. The last remaining problem is the wallet.
You've never been this screwed until you realise you have an option between lodging a police report and missing your flight or trying to board the plane without an IC, failing, and then missing your flight.
I chose option three. There's always this off chance God might smile on you and make things work out. It did. Whilst I was urgently trying to find out from the taxi company if any cabbie had returned a battered wallet. No luck. They hadn't seen anything. But just as I was turning to leave, this cabbie was runing frantically over.
"Were you the one who lost the wallet?" "Yes." "Here you go. This is yours."
Cannot believe it. Mei Ling (boss) was stunned. For me, this is just one of those perks having God on your side. Murphy's law may rule, but God's a lawyer who knows all the loopholes.
PS. Sorry that I took so long to relate this whole thing.
Okay, so it took me a while to post this interview, but watch it. It's worth the laughs.
ells are ringing, and whether you love it or you dread it, Christmas season is back. I spent most of yesterday afternoon and today's lunchtime soaking myself in this "Christmassy" experience and there's loads to hate and there's loads to love. Let me run through the first part of the checklist.
1. Presents
Everyone loves presents! Who doesn't like it when freebies are dropped right into your lap? And the mystery of cracking open your present for the first time and then discovering that huge box you got was due to the layers and layers of newspaper wrapped around it. Of course, give and you shall receive, but giving seems to be the worst part of it. If you didn't figure this expenditure into your early year budget, you'll be at loss to scrape together a couple of sens to splurge on gifts. On the flipside, if you don't give no gifts, you'd feel really bad and guilty when you receive them. Good or bad, it's a coin-toss.
2. Mad-hour traffic jams
I got lucky this time round. Lydia and I had just fought past the traffic to head into The Curve and lo and behold, a parking spot! God loves happy shoppers. I think. Anyway, where I work (MidValley) it's utterly chaotic with the Christmas sale going on. Just take a stroll down to the carpark and you'll see people who circle for hours looking for a place to park, just so they can spend more time queuing up to pay for presents. This is Good, coz I work here, am early, and don't go through the jam.
3. Re-gifters
Ever opened a Christmas present you received from a Christmas party and thought it looked fishily similar to something you saw someone else receive last Christmas? Yups. Re-gifting is all the rage nowadays. Mostly, my presents go into two piles - re-giftable, and the non-re-giftable. Mostly, things you can re-gift are generics like photo frames, candles, ornaments and paper weights. Mostly, these are the things you give away so other people can re-gift them. There must be a micro-economy of re-gifted gifts circulating around in church right now. Bad: you get stuff you eventually give away anyway.
4. Shopping around not knowing what to buy
Either the presents don't fit the person or it doesn't fit the budget. Either way, you're walking around for hours not knowing what to buy or what to give. Bad.
All in all, this year's Christmas shopping hasn't gone too badly - except I bought absolutely nothing for anybody yet (except to little toys for myself - couldn't resist, had a credit card in hand... do the math). The walking was great, took the opportunity to burn some fat. Spent some precious time with Lydia. Now, what to get people?
