djkr and friends take on Life

mount sophia is a rather nice place, if you discount the fact that you have to climb 139 steps every morning. it has a pretty serene environment, the lighting in the toilets is film worthy and timbre is outside my office.

week one has been rather kind to me. i have been eased into the process rather painlessly. work has come in slowly; i only had to do a writeup on a toolkit thus far. my supervisors/colleagues (they are the same) are quite nice. i got nothing much to complain about (maybe my $600 pay)

but oh, those 139 steps. it is an uphill struggle to drag yourself up those steps.  i guess its just one of those employee health benefits they don’t mention on the contract. climbing 139 steps every single day, that is sure to get your thighs into shape.

one week of internship has gone by.

for our first week, the interns from the 4 companies of alchemy, kult, nerf and avenueone met at alchemy for a week long boot camp, where alvin had arranged some of the staffers to come to talk to us, giving us a quick lessons on the industry. we even had an excursion to a colour separation place, a photography studio and a digital imaging place – which was admittedly very cool.

but i guess what i can be most proud of is the fact that one of our ideas that we worked on during boot camp has been actually submitted for consideration to a client. that met a burnt weekend (saturday 6pm to sunday 7am in office), but that is the motivation i need to keep going.

welcome to advertising, baby.

poor ris low. fresh off singaporeans mocking her for her poor english, it has to come to light that miss ris low yi min was once convicted for credit card fraud. her plight curiously mirrors that of carrie prejean, the dethroned miss california, who first raised the ire of the LBGT community with her statements during the miss USA Pageant (‘i think i believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman’), which she credited to her faith. eventually, topless pictures of her were dug up and displayed on the world wide web for all to see, leading to furore (‘which good christian woman would pose topless?’) and her eventual fall from grace.

credit card fraud is no small matter. unlike miss prejean, whose only offense was speaking her mind and posing topless, what ris actually did was criminally wrong. stealing credit cards that were left on the counter by absent minded patients, she went on a shopping spree, pampering her self with gold chains (loud i am sure) and luxury meals.

by keeping quiet on the issue, ERM World Marketing, the organisers of the pageant, have done nothing help their own cause. if ris did not declare to ERM that she was once convicted in a court of law, ERM should speak up now to avoid further bad publicity. by not saying anything now, their silence is an admission of knowledge of her past. absurdly, in the straits times today, one ERM employee was quoted to have said “singaporeans did not pay for her’, in response to being told that Singaporeans were asking ris to be stripped of her crown.

it is a slap to the cheek really; while is true that we did not pay a cent for her, she is going to be representing singapore at an international event. we definitely have a stake in her and ERM should respond to the public appropriately. it also insinuates that ERM has a certain ‘control’ over the selection process; something which questions their intelligence. really? you let a person convicted of credit card fraud to join the pageant and even let her win it? you paid for this to happen?  naturally, i foresee a negative impact on the next edition of the pageant.

to be fair to ris, if razor tv did not run the embarrassing expose on her poor english, none of this might have happened. but in today’s day and age, especially with the rise of social media, one cannot expect to hide any details of one’s life, even more so if you are a celebrity. she (and the rest of the contestants) should have expected this to happen when she joined the pageant.

eventually, the biggest losers in the entire saga might actually be Singapore. with local pageants losing the public’s interest (that was once a time when mediacorp used to sponsor the pageant, i think it all went down hill after they pulled their sponsorship), poor results on the international stage, this farce might be a hammer blow to the ailing scene.

not that i actually watch TV anymore or care for who wins really.

IPPT. i always dread the time when i have to actually take it. maybe it is walking back into a camp again (i am one of those lucky few that don’t get called back during my holidays). maybe its just the pressure of having to pass the stations (stupid yes i know). or it could be just i really hate running 2.4km (don’t you?)

having been in san diego for 6 months and thus missed the opportunity to do ipt (for those of you that don’t know what ipt is – it is sort of like a get out of jail card; you don’t have to pass ippt if you attend ipt), i was really dreading doing ippt. actually no. i was really dreading the aftermath if i failed my ippt – that is remedial training, where you spend 20 sessions of 4 hours in camps training for IPPT. in fact, today while i was in bedok fcc, seeing those nsmen train for rt make me doubly determined not to go for rt. it seems like such a waste of time.

i do have to make a point that i feel standing broad jump is completely useless in IPPT. in fact, many fit people fail their IPPT solely because they cannot jump 216cm. my achilles heel has always been standing broad jump and for this IPPT i made sure that i trained for it.

to ensure that i didn’t have to attend the horror that was RT, i made it a point to train myself 2 months before my IPPT. i had help too. amin, my adm friend who i made while in san diego willingly helped to train me for IPPT, forcing me to run fartlags and timing 2.4 runs with me. he even brought a measuring tape to school to measure how far i could jump.

everything was going swimmingly to plan till 3 days ago, when i caught a throat infection. it certainly wasn’t  the best time to get one. struggling with the infection, i popped a pandol pill, took a red bull shot and headed to bedok fcc, still woozy.

i must admit it was quite daunting since doing my last IPPT one year ago. its just tests and the sort; you feel a sort of pressure to achieve, and if you failure, you feel miserable.

luckily this time, i cleared my pull up, shuttle run and situps (even though i had to push myself a little) quite easily. when it came to standing broad jump, i hesitated a long long while on the machine before taking the jump. i just had to get myself mentally ready. i swung my arms, tucked in my knees and launched myself forward. when you do a good jump, it just feels right. this one did to me. it is obviously not excellent, but considering the fact that last year i only jumped a palsy 207 cm, 221 is a great improvement.

my legs became slightly heavy before the 2.4km run. i speculated that it might have been the panadol; after all, i had never taken panadol before exercising before. it felt that my legs weren’t really there, which was obviously worrying. added to the fact that the weather was not on my side, i was not looking forward to the run.

the 2.4km run is something i really dread. your feet have to continuously pound the track at steady pace or you lose track of time. you must have the mental strength to keep going or you will fall behind. ignore the pain in your thighs and don’t give in.

as i ran around the track, my mind progressively went blank. the first few rounds i still could think coherently. as it went on, however, all i could think about was getting off the damn track and going home. actually no, my mind was like a white sheet of paper.

looking back, i don’t really know how i have been doing it, since my ns days. i managed to clear my 2.4 run in 11:52, which was definitely a nice surprise.

for the first tme since i ORDed, i passed my ippt, with a grand total of 15 points. however, i am most glad that i don’t have to go RT. that would have be an utterly horrible waste of time.

i wonder though if red bull and panadol has any weird side effects. oh well, i guess the $100 i will get for passing my IPPT will cover my medical fees if need be.

everyone who has been on the internet over the past few month must have seen them; those ads advertising for the latest online game evony. after seeing (for the umpteen time) another one of those ads boxed into a small square on the webpages i frequent today, i realised that the ads have actually evolved.

if you have been actually been living in a cave the last few weeks, evony is (supposedly) an online browser based game that the advertisements tout you can: 1. save the queen!, 2. play ‘discreetly’ 3. and will be free forever. and oh yes, the advertisements feature boobs quite prominently.

after doing a wiki and google search on it (ah, yes what would i do without dear wikipedia), i realised that the ads did evolve as time went by. i won’t post the pictures here but you can see for yourself here.

to be honest, i did not really notice them when they featured just the knight; it looked too generic and boring. who wants to play a game where the feature is a boring rusty stale old knight. the next ad with a sword pointed at a vulnerably posed, well endowed computer generated maiden DID capture my attention. you can’t really ignore phallic advertising can you. but no, still not interested.

not working?  lets put up real women on the ads. so now we have stock images of the generic model wearing a white dress staring longing out at you, asking you to ’save’ them. no, still not catching my attention.

this is when the makers of evony decided, well, %)@# it, lets just put a pair boobs there. surely that will entice people to click on the link! they are boobs after all!

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evony’s advertising campaign reeks of desperation. there is plenty more i can go into (like how they are apparently run by a china WOW gold mining company) , but lets just focus on 2 aspects here: advertising and gaming.

from an advertising standpoint, the ads are actually meant to capture attention, and quite successfully so, even though there might be a  misrepresentation of what the game actually is. from what i have read online, there is no actual queen in the game. the official faq also writes:

How do I get my queen?
There is no queen in this game, the ad you saw is for marketing purposes and seems to be highly effective by the number of times this question has come up.

curious (or horny) individuals will feel compelled to click on the link to check out what it offers. if it has done that, the evony ads have done their job, as it is up to the main page to further sell the game. however, but using increasing amounts of cleavage in their adverts, they have earned the scorn of bloggers worldwide for their extremely distasteful ads that have nothing to do with the game. also, the adverts are becoming increasingly more and more like those web banners advertising for adult services.

i once read in the new paper (of all places) that neil french called ‘bad publicity’ the ‘holy grail’ of advertising. while it is true bad publicity (like that of the phallic burger king ad) will drive consumers to try your product, your product must be strong enough to sustain this interest.

this is where i delve into the gaming viewpoint of the game. and rip it apart to pieces.

i am gamer and i take pride in playing good games. and from what evony has shown me in its advertising, i can tell that the game is going to be of slip shod build. if a gaming developer cannot take pride in creative advertising for its games, what is to say that the game will be good? it is insulting to any decent gamer by propositioning the game like this. you don’t want to force dribble down my throat if i don’t want to play it. if you do so, i will reject it even more.

from ripping off the font AND gameplay from civilization, i expect them to get sued pretty soon.

/end rant.

to all my readers out there (whoever you may be, hello!),

it is ironic that i do not really like to blog or write when i really want to be a copywriter in the future (i was hoping the easy path was just to … you know think of ideas and get someone witter to write the copy for you: NEWSFLASH – in your dreams)

so i will try my best to force myself to write (blog rather, sorry) regularly. this is for my own good.

and maybe yours too. you might really enjoy this.

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this must be the latest post on wkwscifoc 2009. but i feel compelled to write something about it.

2 years ago, i made the decision that changed my life forever. i chose to go for wkwsci foc. i very nearly did not go too, as i was jetting off to hong kong the saturday after camp ended. that was one of the best decisions of my life. it made me friends in school, friends that i still keep till this day. it showed me that wkwsci is not just a school, it is really more like a hall. due to its small size. a place where everybody knows everybody. it has a vibrant community where year 1s can talk to year 4s and year 4s talk to their year 4s (aka year 7s). being a media school, this takes on a greater importance as a giant network of media professionals.

last year, i was OGL of penne, a group of awesome individuals that i was proud to be a part of.

this year i was senior attached to freni, a highly energetic bunch of people who can’t stop moving.

what of next year? and really, i can’t wait for the semester ahead. i really missed wkwsci when i was away.

and so… i am back in singapore.

need to retool blog soon.

i have about 3 minutes to write all this before pamy comes out of the toilet.

leaving san diego on a cloudless sunday afternoon, and with a heavy sadness in my heart, pamy and i took a plane to chicago to meet my friend shaun, who is studying at the university of chicago. who  kind of lifted my sadness a tad bit.

now chicago at first glance strikes you like any normal city, but is charm grows on you slowly. it has beautiful gothic inspired architecture and the buildings look aged from the vigours of time.  we visited john hancock observatory, which offered great views of chicago as well as an informative audio tour; walked the millenium mile (think orchard road) and ate deep dish pizza at the first restaurant that invented it in chicago. deep dish pizza is an interesting one; it was invented in uno pizzeria in 1943 and the crust tastes like pie. and it is filling. 2 slices of just plain pepperoni pizza will fill you up. but it is oh so good!

for today, the places we are going will be numerous and i sure hope i wouldn’t tire out by the end of the day. the art insititute of chicago, hull house (anyone find this familiar?), threadless store, navy pier and possibly a trip to a live jaz bar tonight.

and now, from shaun’s 23rd storey apartment overlooking lake michagan, i am about to set off for another day in the ’second city’.

tomorrow will be my last day at san diego state, effectively ending my exchange program in san diego, california. this sunday, i will be leaving california for chicago, new york, washington dc, philadelphia, toronto, ottawa, montreal, boston and new york in an 18 day whirlwind tour.

i feel…. conflicted. about leaving..

and just before i leave san diego… bad luck seems to be haunting me.