Sunday, March 09, 2008
Well now, to say that it's been a while would be quite the understatement eh? Jesus, was that last post really all the way back in September last year? Suffice to say, quite a lot has happened. Oh yes, I know how you children have suffered in my absence, but have no fear, Big Daddy G will explain it all in due time. I'll see how far I get in this post first...
I forgot to mention previously that while I was powering through my Advertising post-assignment, I had already begun working in Lime magazine as a temp writer. I'd normally have a link to their website, but as of this time, they don't have one yet. Go figure. Anyhow, I must say it was an eye-opening experience, working in a big office environment; and one of the big two publishing companies at that. Learnt a lot about how a magazine works, if anything. It was quite the feat, as I was juggling said post-assignment at the same time. I passed, if you're wondering (you know you were, stop rolling your eyes). Shan't go into too much detail on the working experience, only to say that I learnt a lot about myself, the politics within an office environment, and my writing ability.
In October, Denise and I finally got down to celebrating our second year anniversary. Cool, innit? :) We booked ourselves a suite at the Novotel Clarke Quay Singapore for a night! We had dinner at Pasta Brava (thank you K F Seetoh) which is amazingly authentically Italian, and at rather decent prices to boot. After which, debauchery with friends at O Bar followed.
Ah yes, November. My liver took quite a beating. Denise brought me out to Minori for dinner. It's a Japanese a la carte buffet spread. Raw fish flowed like water. I couldn't have been happier :) After which, down to O Bar for yet again more decadence. Yes, I know, I'm beginning to notice a pattern forming as well. I really appreciated everyone who made the effort to come down, though I can't say much for the variety of drinks that were bought for me. All I know is, I started drinking around 9pm, and didn't stop till nearer to closing. Unfortunately, what happened past midnight is still a blur to me to this very day. Thankfully (or not), there were a multitude of pictures taken (which can be viewed on my Facebook profile), of which a couple revealed a rather disturbing turn of events (I hate you Lin). All I can say is I'm happy that I was the victim and not the perpetrator. Eh Ravi? :) A HUGE thank you to my baby for being able to drag my completely toasted Chinese ass home that night!
Sweet Long December. Denise had headed down to New Zealand for a family holiday for a few weeks. I was busying myself with writing duties. By this time, I had figured that it was time to move on. Lime wasn't going to hire me fulltime, and I could only survive so much longer on the temp pay I was receiving. Big props to Kenneth who helped me get an interview with NewMan magazine! Well, I went, I saw, I SCORED! Yep, been a fulltime NewMan writer since late December. Now how sweet is that? :)
Before you guys (and some girls, you know who you lot are) start with the FHM/Maxim comparisons and thinking it's a "to-die-for" job because of all the hot girls I get to interview, let me inform you that other than the magazines’ shape and size, that's about where the similarities end. I honestly don't get to interview that many women on that regularly a basis, and it's not as if the ones I do are these sexually deprived nymphomaniacs who're about to jump you the moment you breathe out. And there's still the job of having to churn out a three page article later. If anything, we pride ourselves of being more of a well-rounded men's rag. We cover fashion, health, career, money; the works! Anything and everything we can inform and educate you on to becoming the Man's Man :)
Talk about getting my feet wet the first day I started; more like being thrown into the middle of the ocean! Suddenly, the number of articles I used to do in Lime seemed microscopic compared to the galactic amount being thrown at me. Honestly though, I really enjoy it. Yeah, I might bitch about the workload now and then, but I love the variety of subjects I have to tackle, and the people I get to interact with. And what's cool is that it's a relatively new team, so it's great that everyone's slowly getting to know each other. We're going through a revamp (check out our April issue!), and I'm just really happy to be part of something new. Not to mention, I get to go on some pretty neat assignments :) I might be heading up to the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia for a romantic getaway (yes, with Denise) as part of a Travel story. And come 20 March, I'll be heading up to the Sepang Circuit in Malaysia for a few days for some Red Bull F1 thingy. I'm just going there for the free food and alcohol, so don't hold your breath if you think I'm about to launch into some exciting tirade about the explosiveness of Formula 1. I know as much about F1 as I do about F4. Which isn't a lot. Really.
And that's the gist of things that are going on with me in NewMan right now. But that's not all that happened in December :) I won another trip from MTV Asia! No seriously! This time, it was a trip to Japan to meet Alicia Keys! It was fun (and very cold), but I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the 2006 Mission Impossible III Tokyo Premiere. Mostly 'cause Denise wasn't there to share it with me, as she was still in New Zealand with her family. Considering that she was the bigger Alicia Keys fan, I bought the Japanese pressing of her Unplugged DVD, and upon meeting Ms. Keys, asked her to autograph and make it out to 'Denise' :) I'd like to think she was quite pleased with it when I gave it to her.
Christmas was ushered in quietly. Denise was back and we spent the Eve at Chips. I got her The Muppet Christmas Carol Anniversary Edition DVD, and she got me the Transformers DVD. Ah, but not just any old DVD. She got me the two-disc collector's edition case, which itself can transform into a 15-inch-tall two-dimensional Optimus Prime! Too cool for school yo, too cool for school... :)
New Year's Eve was spent having a quiet barbecue at Dan's place. It was made all the more festive with a Chinese firework that Laurence had passed to me sometime back. I'm just happy it sparked and didn't fizzle :)
And that pretty much sums up the remaining months of 2007. Well, I use "sums up" loosely, but you get the idea. Rest assured, my magazine articles aren't as long-winded. My editor sees to that :) With any luck, I'll be able to squeeze in another post some time in the near future and tell you all about how 2008 has been going for me so far. I wouldn't bet on it though. My fellow writer Khazmin has to head off for reservist soon, and my workload for the May ish is leaning more towards three-quarters of the content. I'll be happy to see sunlight this month *sighs* Write you all soon people!
I forgot to mention previously that while I was powering through my Advertising post-assignment, I had already begun working in Lime magazine as a temp writer. I'd normally have a link to their website, but as of this time, they don't have one yet. Go figure. Anyhow, I must say it was an eye-opening experience, working in a big office environment; and one of the big two publishing companies at that. Learnt a lot about how a magazine works, if anything. It was quite the feat, as I was juggling said post-assignment at the same time. I passed, if you're wondering (you know you were, stop rolling your eyes). Shan't go into too much detail on the working experience, only to say that I learnt a lot about myself, the politics within an office environment, and my writing ability.
In October, Denise and I finally got down to celebrating our second year anniversary. Cool, innit? :) We booked ourselves a suite at the Novotel Clarke Quay Singapore for a night! We had dinner at Pasta Brava (thank you K F Seetoh) which is amazingly authentically Italian, and at rather decent prices to boot. After which, debauchery with friends at O Bar followed.
Ah yes, November. My liver took quite a beating. Denise brought me out to Minori for dinner. It's a Japanese a la carte buffet spread. Raw fish flowed like water. I couldn't have been happier :) After which, down to O Bar for yet again more decadence. Yes, I know, I'm beginning to notice a pattern forming as well. I really appreciated everyone who made the effort to come down, though I can't say much for the variety of drinks that were bought for me. All I know is, I started drinking around 9pm, and didn't stop till nearer to closing. Unfortunately, what happened past midnight is still a blur to me to this very day. Thankfully (or not), there were a multitude of pictures taken (which can be viewed on my Facebook profile), of which a couple revealed a rather disturbing turn of events (I hate you Lin). All I can say is I'm happy that I was the victim and not the perpetrator. Eh Ravi? :) A HUGE thank you to my baby for being able to drag my completely toasted Chinese ass home that night!
Sweet Long December. Denise had headed down to New Zealand for a family holiday for a few weeks. I was busying myself with writing duties. By this time, I had figured that it was time to move on. Lime wasn't going to hire me fulltime, and I could only survive so much longer on the temp pay I was receiving. Big props to Kenneth who helped me get an interview with NewMan magazine! Well, I went, I saw, I SCORED! Yep, been a fulltime NewMan writer since late December. Now how sweet is that? :)
Before you guys (and some girls, you know who you lot are) start with the FHM/Maxim comparisons and thinking it's a "to-die-for" job because of all the hot girls I get to interview, let me inform you that other than the magazines’ shape and size, that's about where the similarities end. I honestly don't get to interview that many women on that regularly a basis, and it's not as if the ones I do are these sexually deprived nymphomaniacs who're about to jump you the moment you breathe out. And there's still the job of having to churn out a three page article later. If anything, we pride ourselves of being more of a well-rounded men's rag. We cover fashion, health, career, money; the works! Anything and everything we can inform and educate you on to becoming the Man's Man :)
Talk about getting my feet wet the first day I started; more like being thrown into the middle of the ocean! Suddenly, the number of articles I used to do in Lime seemed microscopic compared to the galactic amount being thrown at me. Honestly though, I really enjoy it. Yeah, I might bitch about the workload now and then, but I love the variety of subjects I have to tackle, and the people I get to interact with. And what's cool is that it's a relatively new team, so it's great that everyone's slowly getting to know each other. We're going through a revamp (check out our April issue!), and I'm just really happy to be part of something new. Not to mention, I get to go on some pretty neat assignments :) I might be heading up to the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia for a romantic getaway (yes, with Denise) as part of a Travel story. And come 20 March, I'll be heading up to the Sepang Circuit in Malaysia for a few days for some Red Bull F1 thingy. I'm just going there for the free food and alcohol, so don't hold your breath if you think I'm about to launch into some exciting tirade about the explosiveness of Formula 1. I know as much about F1 as I do about F4. Which isn't a lot. Really.
And that's the gist of things that are going on with me in NewMan right now. But that's not all that happened in December :) I won another trip from MTV Asia! No seriously! This time, it was a trip to Japan to meet Alicia Keys! It was fun (and very cold), but I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the 2006 Mission Impossible III Tokyo Premiere. Mostly 'cause Denise wasn't there to share it with me, as she was still in New Zealand with her family. Considering that she was the bigger Alicia Keys fan, I bought the Japanese pressing of her Unplugged DVD, and upon meeting Ms. Keys, asked her to autograph and make it out to 'Denise' :) I'd like to think she was quite pleased with it when I gave it to her.
Christmas was ushered in quietly. Denise was back and we spent the Eve at Chips. I got her The Muppet Christmas Carol Anniversary Edition DVD, and she got me the Transformers DVD. Ah, but not just any old DVD. She got me the two-disc collector's edition case, which itself can transform into a 15-inch-tall two-dimensional Optimus Prime! Too cool for school yo, too cool for school... :)
New Year's Eve was spent having a quiet barbecue at Dan's place. It was made all the more festive with a Chinese firework that Laurence had passed to me sometime back. I'm just happy it sparked and didn't fizzle :)
And that pretty much sums up the remaining months of 2007. Well, I use "sums up" loosely, but you get the idea. Rest assured, my magazine articles aren't as long-winded. My editor sees to that :) With any luck, I'll be able to squeeze in another post some time in the near future and tell you all about how 2008 has been going for me so far. I wouldn't bet on it though. My fellow writer Khazmin has to head off for reservist soon, and my workload for the May ish is leaning more towards three-quarters of the content. I'll be happy to see sunlight this month *sighs* Write you all soon people!
