Pains in the Neck!

The dreadful feeling started early yesterday morning. I felt it.. and experience told me that it was the start of a full blown stiff neck. Pain number one. My darling gave me a back rub last night, but helped little in abating the pain in the neck I feel right now. My actions have become robotic again, only 3 to 4 days after recovering from my last back ache! Looks like another visit to my suddenly rich masseuse (Chui and I have already spent RM150 this month alone for relief). Looks like another RM50 gone!

Pain in the Neck Two. My favourite Client, decided late last Thursday evening to run a tribute ad to our out going PM in a local newspaper supplement with the material deadline set at 5pm Monday. Aiks! What? Are they mad? Okay.. no need to panic. We have been down this road before. Just give us a brief, let us know what you want, and we can work over the weekend to meet the deadline. But... no! It is already too late in the evening (this is still thursday), to give you a brief.. we will meet Monday (since Friday is a public holiday and being a long weekend we don't want to work) morning amongst ourselves, and decide a direction to take. WHAT?!

Monday morning comes.. precious time ticks away... and finally at about 11 am, we get the brief. Make us 4 new ads, for us to choose from! Hmm.. what was wrong with the ad that we had already done much earlier for a cancelled supplement in the AWSJ? Nope.. the committee decided that we want another ad. Okay.. So we get our direction, and we go make some ads. Luckily, this was one time where we got a rather clear route from them to take. We had the ads done by 1.30pm, and they were sent to the clients for clearing.

Time ticks away again...

At about 4pm.. they call. "We want the original ad afterall!" "That is the one which we will use". Ok. Cool. Lets get the film makers in. They have less than 1 hour to get the films done and delivered! Those in the know, will tell you that it is quite impossible to do. Afterall, it still takes time for travelling through and fro and so on. Many calls are made to plea for an extension in deadline.

FA is done, film makers have collected the CD containing the masters and they are off at 4.30pm. Hmm.. Phew.. it will be late.. but at least its done. Right?

WRONG!

We got call after call from the clients to make changes.. not big huge changes mind you, but rather small, insipid and idiotic changes that frankly, would have made no difference to the ad! For example. "Make logo bigger!" OK.. fine.. typical request.. So.. how much bigger? 10% bigger? No.. that will be too much.. "make it 2% bigger!" What? 2%? Sheesssh.. What kind of difference is that going to make?

Off course.. all these changes have to be made remotely. My colour separator has to make these changes on the master on his side. There is simply no more time available to make another commute to collect fresh FAs! They must have made at least 3 sets of redundant materials before the stupid need to make changes abated at about 5.30! Jeeez.. What else can possibly go wrong?!

Never ask for you may receive! Pain in the Neck Number Three!

PM leaves office on the 31st. DPM takes over on the 1st. We cannot have a tribute to the outgoing PM without a welcome to the new? Uhuh!!!

"We need another ad guys!" We cannot brief you till tomorrow.. Its already to late this evening to do it, besides.. its ramadan, we need to go break fast! And by the way.. the material deadline is Wednesday at 5pm....

ITS A NIGHTMARE! Actually no.. ITS PAINs IN THE NECK!

Bangsar?

I propose a new name for Bangsar. As I was driving down Bangsar today, I noticed that they have just constructed three new speed breakers along my favorite route. This is on top of the 500 breakers found here. As though the many road irregularities and the constant road work scars are not enough to make a rather unpleasant journey into and out of bangsar, they have to put up more of these really badly engineered mountains that test the best suspension systems on the best cars. Maybe its got to do with the proliferation of SUVs on the roads today. Hmm.. I wonder which came first.. the SUV of the road mountains? Maybe it is a conspiracy. Who knows..

Alll I do know, is that Bangsar shall be forever be renamed Bumpsar from now on, at least in my books!

The Joys of iChat AV

Just spent 20 minutes catching up with another cousin of mine who resides in Seattle using Apple's incredible iChat AV. Pity I did not have iSight (av cam) but we still managed to do a voice chat. The quality was excellent, we both had no problems hearing each other. I must say it sounded almost as good as a normal telephone call. Great thing about this set-up? Its FREE!

Now.. I will make it my next project to get Asha and Ben hooked up as well. This way.. we should be able to have voice chats at the very least. South Africa is actually very far behind the internet curve as they still have no infrastructure for iDSL or any other broadband service which is required for video chats.

Council of Cousins

Allan and Nigel hosted the inaugaral meeting of the cousins. We have family meets/dinners/parties all the time but we have never had one that was just for the "next generation". It was actually really nice, as it was a lot more comfortable for all of us to speak our minds and chit chat about stuff that would be taboo if the adults were around. We must do this again.

Nigel cooked up a storm, serving us nasi dagang, with a pork curry, char siew and a stewy vegetable dish. Thanks bro!

My back is still killing me. Its not as bad to be sure as it was on Sunday, but its still bugging me. Still walking around like I have something stuck up my arse. Highly irritating.

Just got me self a spanking new Hard Drive and spent the better part of yesterday evening moving files and old documents and backing them up. Maybe its just me.. but my computer seems to work a little faster after the move. Grin.. Was trying to convince my partners for me to get my number one object of lust, the new 15inch Powerbook, but he has persuaded me to wait a while for what would definately top it.. A G5 Powerbook! Yummy.. Unfortunately, I will have a bit of a wait as Steve Jobs reckons they will only get the G5 chipset into a Powerbook late next year.

Can't wait!

Growing Old

Played Footsal on Saturday. Was invited to this rather last minute game by my uncle who arranged a friendly match between some very old farts versus some friends of his young son. I remember the time when i was younger, and how we had trashed the hell out of our older uncles in soccer. I know know exactly how my uncles must have felt to be run around in circles by the younger set!

To my dismay, I threw my back out playing. The pain was horrible, so much so, I could not walk for practicaly the whole weekend. I could not even sleep that night! Sigh...

Ramblings

Its been a while since my last post. Many many things have happened since. We went Diving in Mabul/Sipadan. I caught the flu bug. Michael Schumacher became World Champion for the 6th time! England scraped through a scrappy match against Turkey.

Sipadan was wonderful. The resort that we were staying at was first class, with all the amenities any diver would ask for. The service was excellent also and the people there very friendly. Go check out some pictures that I managed to take with a housed Canon IXUS400, at http://homepage.mac.com/dyap38/PhotoAlbum2.html

The camera fared better than I had expected underwater, giving quite good results. The instant feedback was also very beneficial. Only drawback to the set-up was that the lens was prone to fogging, due to the excessive heat generated from the camera itself.

Most of the people who went on the trip has become more enthusiastic about diving than before they went, wich is a good thing. Trips are already being planned next year!