there is a point in time where the communication divide is too great to conquer. especially in a place like Insead. I have had many moments where things are great, funny and within 30secs, it turns into this awkard "what the hell"/ "let’s take 5 minutes of silence", which is promptly accompanied by some feet shuffling and saying stuff like "so…i’ll see u later".

today, i had such an experience, but in an online medium. while chatting about SFTM and its relative success, one of the SG attendees msgs me and says," I haven’t picked up the copy from my mailbox, but after i do, i will let you know what i think about it." this is largely met by silence from my end because erh…why do I care? *awkard feet shuffling* then, the next comment that follows is a killar… "I used to be the editor of my school magazine in university" WTF? ok, so i suppose Elle would love to give you a job now. great. peachy. "oh and by the way, i got an interview at bain…" - erh…definitely all the tailmarks of an insecure consultant. I am running away now, cos this is one of those convos that just gets outta hand…my feet are shuffling hard underneath the table and Raphael who is sitting beside me is bemused.

there is a point in time where i am never quite sure when i should speak, just because you never know what/ how the other person is processing what you are saying. having been bombarded by this incident today, i am all the more sure that i should just zip my mouth and not unleash my comments on the general public, especially when its comments to do with intelligence/self-worth/level of hotness etc. I am surrounded by successful stars everyday and if there is one thing i learnt at Insead, is just to understand that one is never at the top of the fur pile. more like a bystander…a fluffer of sorts. but fluffers do serve a purpose and there is a job for them in the whole value chain, so it can’t hurt.

now, i have to try and get over the pain of having to forget this particular convo. i hate try-hards and pretentious people who try to overstate how fucking smart/ successful they are. it’s freaking boring.

some other convo’s i love…this one was sent to me by Ashish, sometime around midnight, while still slaving away at the bib. pure poetry:

14-hour workdays? Man, that’s India for u man…that whole outsourcing/ offshoring trend is causing our indian compardres to savour 14-hour days. hiaks…i could almost put this piece of poetry against a speed metal soundtrack. ace…what what the hell…i love the way engineers think

Yesterday was nicely spent having a random dinner with 2 P4’s (Nicolo and Christine) and 3 other P2’s. Dinner was super yummy, with chargrilled chicken off the BBQ, yummy salad with avocados and more wine and cheese you can drink. What seemed like a rather strange motley crue of people turned out to be a really nice evening, especially when we got talking about freaky collectors and strange things that they collect. Benoit had loads of funky stories from his days at eBay, meeting toy collectors, defaced stamp collectors and attending serious-ass Star wars conventions…i also got to share my sneaker fetish - although i must admit that i am *almost* cured of my sneaker diesease now. I mean age is against me - nobody is EVERY gonna take me seriously if I wear sneakers all the time, plus I heard that boys like girls in heels. Sigh - this world is unfair - nothing like my Nike Air Force One midfields or Air Shake N Destruckts - totally radikal…i miss my shoe collection back home. ah well….but then after i told of my Japan shoehunting escapades and turning down an offer of US$400 for my Nike Air shakes at Kinokuniya bookstore in Singapore…everyone promptly told me I was insane and suffering from collector’s disease. Sell my cool limited edition sneaks?? NEVER! gasp - what travesty….i love all my shoes. it would impossible to let go. my dream house is when i have a huge shoe cabinent where i can segregate sneakers, heels, slippers, serious man-hunting shoes and have every conceivable colour possible.

here are snaps from dinner. too bad i didnt get any of benoit and the one of christine is not good enough - nothing like the sexy umbrella topless shot she did for the Can-Am calender (Which i need to congratualate chris angell for his fantasik job there - respekt).

en fait, dinner was so fun, we finished up at 1am and i was totally shitfaced in class today. i had to skip out of strategy, go home and slept for 2 hours straight.

The high of the day…Vorspiel Friday is finally locked and loaded! After having administrative nightmares from the school, everything from No to changing the bar area lights, having a proper set design to my tagline that originally mentioned: "Because Foreplay is always fun" and now just sadly says "because playing is fun"…we are finally all set for our first ever pre-party at the bar area. I got Jase on the decks with sexy housey lounge and we got some video-wall images done up by Henry and Han…I hope it goes well. The idea for vorspiels was really a leftover from my days in Norway where we always had bomb-ass preparties to set us up for the night and this is really an extension of that. Just nicely, Tavers will be having a pimping party on 7 April (so titled hugh hefner) so our inaugural pre-party is gonna serve its dutiful purpose.  lots of first-borns and inaugurals this month. it be special…and i like! *wink* see the naked but highly sacred vorspiel friday website…is the concept clear to all?

xxoo

something like 3 weeks ago, i received an innocuous email from erik asking if I was interested to write for a humour rag and i gladly accepted, just because i read a draft of the material and it made me nearly die laughing. SFTM was launched at Fonty yesterday and the vibes have been pretty positive. In today’s POM class, there was some kind of production chain (no bottlenecks) going on, with a copy of SFTM being passed around from reader to reader. since then, a couple of P2’s have shown interest in continuing the flame so INSEAD - watch out! No one shall be spared their dignity…

there’s an argument going on beside me. Some dude is complaining to his social chair, "look, i totally disagree that i deserve 2 champagne fines for stupid comments in class". there are 7 other persons who had stupid comments too and i wrote their names down here." social chair replies," look, we just need to be more strict - we didn’t have enough champagne fines for our party." not that it ACTUALLY answered his query or rationale, but hey, we are all great at strategic thinking here, so that must have been some kind of blue ocean comment.

so i thought i ought to share the news of the day - we had a camel loose in the bar area today. No, i am not joking, we had a real petting camel, given that it’s Arab Week and all sorts of delightful activities had been planned. where they got the camel or the funding from - i can’t even begin to imagine (must be the damn oil money). the petting camel looked real bored though and i don’t think it enjoyed being carressed very much or being swamped by over-zealous japanese camera-loving students. no day is a la-di-dah day here, so i am hardly shocked by anything anymore - streakers and camels alike.

i thought today would be a good time to take a break from blogging about the hectic ongoings at school…they have been slightly OTT…and goss about my new camera! Woo hoo…i have been wanting to get the Panasonic Lumix FZ 20 for a really long time now (1 year 2 weeks to be exact…or something similar). It’s a nifty little prosumer camera, not quite DSLR yet but it’s pretty good value for money and easy to use. Response time is still a little slow, which will probably make impromptu spy shots challenging, but it’s definitely up there for lens brightness and kudos on the 12x optical zoom - so maybe it is still good for impromtu spy shots?! there is better control over the aperture function so am thinking of experimenting with that on close-up people shots, it should get some good results - plus i got a wide-angle lens, so that’s gonna be fun to experiment with too.

test shot, including messy bed/ table/ piece of furniture for all things in general:

thing is, i always wanted a pocket camera but i never got around to getting one, just because they still feel unsubstantive to me, but maybe i am a sucker for function over form i am still waiting for the weather to turn and get better lighting for shots. and i know that if i had to buy my next camera, it would be a DSLR, no doubt- perhaps a Nikon, because the people on CSI use Nikon, so it must be very good. ;)  Although, having said that, they use flash with all the pictures they take, so I bet the pictures are not as nice as when they put it on Archie’s screen for enhancements.

only problem is having to put the camera in my already full bag - arghs…thats another thing altogether - I keep feeling like I ought to get a bigger bag and at the end of the day, I practically have to dive into my sack to retrieve anything. last search for my school badge took a whooping 3 min and 45 sec, and holding up an entire bunch of people too…thank god i have some conversational skills, which i unbashedly utilized. nobody even noticed…kakaka. *pat on back*

P2 is starting out nice…the weather has finally changed and we have folks all splayed out on the grass. It makes it slightly distracting that the weather is so beautiful and we are stuck in POM trying to understand continuous processes and bottlenecks. *roll eyeballs*

The weekend was quiet, post friday - hanging out at the bib and dinner with random folks. I finally had the honour of meeting the resident rape-snogger in school….The story? So, a random person who shall not be named, whom we all have come to know and love…never sleeps in his bed. He also had the misfortune of staying over at Snogboy’s one night and dutifully got himself rape-snogged by a wandering tongue. I heard it went ALL the way BACK down his throat. Any more details and this is going to spell like Deepthroat Part 7 - the updated gay version.

fortunately for the rest of the population, rape-snogging is not going to be an issue, since technically, you cannot rape the willing so Snogboy’s out of niche segments there. There was also some streaking in the piscine parking lot going on, since certain folks wanted to get onto "The Other Dean’s List"- which included having to do certain highly promiscuious tasks such as getting caught being naked, kissing the same sex and having challenged grades. this it’s tough…not easy at all - so applaude those that made it to the list. thats the great thing about being in an international school - streaking in certain cultures is like non-streaking at all. perhaps the right phrase is being zen or something. everything deserves a good laugh these days.

summer sun - i like - slippers out people, slippers out! that’s as far as streaking for me goes

Suitably so, I survived Grade Dessimination Day. As all grade release days go, this one was no different. Sweaty looking students (too much heating and warm weather), worried frowns and nervous giggles, entering a cold and scary looking room with 3 nazi looking women surrounded by innocuous brown packets. it took all of 30 secs to get my brown packet and another 5 secs to rip it open (I am a fast-action figure). The dean said post P1 results, we would understand the curve a lot better. Erh…i have to say, i think i am slow and to me, someone being able to get a 6.05 for LPG is not intuitive at all. It’s like saying that they got more than 100% for a paper, that only had 100% to score. I don’t think I ever will understand this Z-curve thing, but maybe my instincts just disagree with it because being from an educational system where 85 marks is an A, suddenly my 85 marks is like worth less than the toilet paper i use to wipe my arse with.

The only positive upside to Grade Day is getting FREE HUGS. That’s right, for some reason, people really want to bond. Actually, it’s just us Stuck-in-middle types that wanna bond. So, free hugs abound, we feel a real sense of solidarity. Dean’s lists folks are really friendless, and will be forced into an eternity of suffering and academic torture to maintain their GPAs. Mua kakaka.

Post awesome dinner, we decided to head to Favela Chic in Paris, - and fuckin’ rocking it was. FIlled with beautiful people of all ages, in skinny jeans, singlets, gorgeous gay men and swedish teens with nice haircuts; Favela Chic is like one of these DIY clubs thats not anything but electic. Amidst sweaty bodies, a mix of latin all the way to jungle music and a live MC to sooth the grooves, i had to remove all my accessories one by one, just to get more motion in ya know. only tip is never, never wear white shoes cos my nice white pointy toe shoes came out wretched and my feet were aching from being stepped on by overzealous dancers. but all in the name of good fun, so that’s ok.

no night ends in paris without your defacto street vagrant trying to whisper nonsensical things in your ear. As usual, i am standing at a kebab stall, ordering chips at 3 in the morning and one of these vagrants come up to me and start spouting some kind of arabic/ french in my ear while learing at my face. And of course, being men of courage and valour, JJ, Chris and Gunjan stand there laughing their heads off while i cooly ignore the vagrant (although, i did look abit like a vagrant myself, having a dress that was lop-sided, my hair was like standing on ends and blackened white shoes). I have had much experience doing this now, after being accosted by one too many over-excited vagrants that enjoy yelling "once u go Asian! U never go Caucasian" (WTF man), i think i handled it well, took my kebab, flashed the vagrant a smile and walked off.

spring is finally coming and today is the first day i can wear 2 layers of clothes. Can’t wait till i get back to singapore-style fashion and whip out my slippers for school. righteous! bon weekend folks!

We have been told to read this book titled The Goal for our POM class, which on all counts is pretty entertaining for a book about manufacturing, productivity and some key terms like efficiency. But being pretty lazy, i decided that firstly: I would not buy the book (it was something like 30 euros - which translates into either a very good meal or a nice pair of shoes) and secondly: that i would learn MUCH quicker if i just got a book that had already been read, underlined and assessed by some former predecessor. Learn from the best…yadda yadda. So, i got The Goal from the bib - and sure enough, there are all sorts of scribbles in the book.

I feel quite damn satisfied that so far, my theory is working. If i just read all the underlined bits, I should be ok. technically, i would be able to learn all the key summary points and pass this POM class without any hiccups. I start thumbing through the book and whoever read this book prior to me felt the following points to be highly succint. Most of these lines were either underlined or had additional BOLD lettering with key words to highlight its supposed importance.

" But, hell, I’ve got an engineering degree. I’ve got an MBA."??? - huh? like how is this important? must be some ex-engineer who felt affinity with the protaganist.

"Here I am, thirty-eight years old, and I’m a crummy plant manager". (scribbled beside this underlined sentence is in large fonts - 38)…eh…at this point in time, i am starting to think my theory stinks. whoever my predecessor was, he or she obviously did not take a course in topic sentences or summary writing.

"Throughput" - that was it.

"Inventory is…" - again, that was it!

the next 3 chpts - nada underlines! what the hell! so much from learning from other’s past experiences. dud job.

Today, the music club met for the first time and the old band managed to jam some nice tunes. they did try to cover Portishead - but i was like…not sure if it was meant to be sung with an operatic gusto type vocal. I mean, Beth Orton is pretty much a weird vocalist, and i do like weird vocalists - i guess being slightly left of center, i like all things imperfect but with edge. lots of people ask me if i am a musician and i had some time to think about it…and the answer is No. I think i am an artiste, which means that i am not good enough to do covers but i am good enough to write my own tunes. and i can probably strum my guitar or play the piano in my own way, but i cant, for the life of me read notes, strum differently or like sing differently.

a bunch of us want to do something more low key, so we decided to form a sub-group to kinda mess around with loops, beats and samples. might be fun. I love to get some turntabling action, perhaps with bossanova chord structures and add in some blips and clicks for fun. fun times…but i had forgotten how hard is it working with new people on tunes since i have been working solo for far too long. today was the first day in probably 3 mths that i have opened my ableton program and peered into it. now i miss my music studio back home. aw fuck. plus music equipment in france is dead expensive and sucks.

Define a good, rocking party: The E7 P1 send-off champ party rocked the house. Great food, awesome sushis and awesome music. Although, certain foods prepared were suspect. Chekkit - not sure what international cuisine THIS IS, but i guess if nobody ate it - pretty obvious. Whoever made it - own up now!

suspicious aubergine? weird pasta deformation? eh…we poked around a bit but nothing registered.

In going into this party, i was kinda stressed by folk’s expectations - would our music be too much? would it reasonate well with the crowd? Matty and I spent hours thumbing through commericial-ish hits and agreed that if it was Top 40, it had to be 1) a remix 2) a remix 3) a B-side to some remix. But man, everyone was great, with about only 5% of the time being asked about playing salsa tracks. I didn’t have any but Fabio has some, so I tried to spin 2 songs, and so esthetic was the Latin community in our section that a minor accident with some flying girl, a wall and some tumbling went on. Ah well - at least u know who to have at your parties!

There was some secret voting going on for E7’s "Hot Men List" and i am glad to say my gal pal Matty tore up the competition. John Connelly and Benoit Bacuvier were next in line but I thought we could have treated them proper and threw pop corn at them or something. Next time then…i’ll bring the peanuts. there was also a marriage proposal by Ralph to Angel - weird, i always knew Ralph was a sista but i love this new "out, loud and proud’"  thing, it totally works… *wink* and Angel, as we know, is such a manly man u know. I would like, love to be ordered around by him to clean the kitchen or something…

The set list went better than expected…started out with chillout, jazzy sounds. Did you HEAR ME CORRECTLY? YES! i managed to sneak in sounds from jazzanova, koop, pink martini - very kitsch, and of course, Marvin Gaye. and people danced! There is hope Insead, there is hope! Mat played a funky set - lots of hip hop but he did sneak in Beastie Boys - which rocked and we had loads of big beat  stuff like Chem Brothers (am too old for that. my dancing skills are not what they used to be), Fatboy slim, The Streets and lots of commerical ones like Eve, gwen stefani. Yannick is standing at the corner going, " you don’t understand. u HAVE to play Bon Jovi, the crowd goes apeshit for that". I was like…erh, I don’t have Bon Jovi, sorry…and how does one play bon jovi in between an Usher and Justin Timberlake track?! Arghs - keep to the set list people?!!!!! lesson learnt: everyone felt kinda worried how tenacious our situation as section Djs was gonna be. Everyone and his mother came up to us with advice and past party planning experience. I love it when everything said is IRRELEVANT.

i am utterly destroyed now cos Matty finished up the night with good ole’ fashion rock and that’s when all my air guitar techniques come out. embarressing - yes…good fun, totally! to all my fellow rockers out there - thank u for staying til the last minute! 15 champs later and drunk as a whale (not sure if whales do drink…what then do they do for leisure?!?!), i gotta run. marketing calls - fuckin’ hell. if all hell breaks loose, i m sticking up my hand in class and say " Black and decker should go with Orange". that’s all boys and girls…

today is one of those catch up days - where i do administration, update my life for the last 3 days or so and then proceed to fall asleep at the bib table. ‘time flies when u are having fun and the breakdown of the weekend was as follows. After the bib kru finished music swapping, i headed on a lonely train down to paris at 1030pm. met up with Lyn and misato - and headed over to Benoit’s house for his house party with loads of champagne and real french people. talk about my immersion program! I am like…totally in the groove…

benoit’s party is fucking awesome. he is spinning the oldies but goodies, jackson 5, nina simone, prince, loads of nu-beatz type stuff…and the odd britney spears, which totally worked. his flat is filled with records  and nice sneakers. that’s a real catch right there ladies…records and good shoes. there are models at his party, which always makes any party rock. i personally love looking at models. They look like they are having stylised fun - almost like on a Diesel advertisement. It’s this look of over-happiness, being hyper-engaged and dancing their little tooshies off (off-beat, but hey, what the heck right?). and there is NOTHING compared to a model sandwich rub-on. That’s when u get 2 hot model girls rubbing themselves sexy with a model dude stuck in the middle. How hard does that rock? IT RAWKS! i lurve…anyways, dancing my tits off is always a good thing. at least i go to bed smiling and i can tell you that managerial accounting does not have the same effect on me. i could pretend to have stylised fun but i am not a model…so what can is say.

5 hours later, i find myself at another benoit’s house - this is like my french immersion weekend…i am proud of myself. more pics and more people. i brought my poloroid around and snapped everyone and used it as our placemats. there is this wonderful split second where the person u are photographing lets their guard down and are relaxed, that makes a great picture. i can’t photo goats, landscapes, buildings or trash cans, but i think i do people quite well.

and courtesy of shauna - i got my pic taken too!

lazy afternoons are wonderful. unfortunately, the real work calls but first, am gonna nap. then more POM, more MA and like strategy calls. how did i get into this crap mess?!?! i think i party too hard and need to catch up. falling asleepin in class on a monday just kinda signals that the week ahead is going to be crap and as much as my asian roots will let me go - i actually feel massive amounts of guilt for fucking up. so, mum, i will try very, very hard.

it feels like it’s been forever and a day since i last blogged. the weekend was nothing short of amazing. bunch of us geeks spent saturday afternoon swapping music. There is nothing quite like coming together for a purpose you know, and looking into someone’s hard drive, it’s like staring into your soul. Thanks mates for the trust, u guys rock! But anyhoos, the weather was brilliant, slightly cold…we had beers starting at 12-ish, made laksa, copied music and pretended to be djs, the whole day. damn right entertaining.

there were moments where i was staring at Mat’s like 1000 albums and going, shit dude, we totally listen to the same music. how weird is that? how wacky is that? how scary is that? it’s a revelation!

check da fotos:

our massive setup…so what’s a good party mix? Get 1 pensive and slightly grumpy brit, 1 fun-loving aussie, 1 serious about having a good time swede and your oddball singaporean girl. the next time we meet: i am bringing a pianica and al is gonna haul a moog and play the spoons. that’s what i call a good life!