Wedding of the Year

Here comes the second Text 100 Malaysia baby who got married. Yay! Congratulations...

Calling this wedding of the year, simply because we've practically waited for two years after the first person, David was (fortunately, or unfortunately) taken.

I guess Corina Chee needs no introduction to many of you, so instead of telling all the long fairy tales about how she and her husband met and the kind of journey they went through before making that decision, you can watch the video at the end of this post. It was played during the wedding dinner on 21 September 2009.

So what did we do to make this the Wedding of the Year...

• A pre-wedding microblogging on Twitter with a hashtag #Nobsis, which highlights one of Corina's childhood photo:
  #Nobsis Media guys, wanna take a stab at who's this? http://twitpic.com/eksac
  The post generated a trail of interesting conversation, with some media asking if Nobsis is a new technology...
  
• Hen's night at The Library. Corina (reluctantly) did some assignments, including offering men a belly-dance and pinching a (sissy) boy's ass. Also, we had 2 x Flaming Lamborghini courtesy of Vicky H. Most memorable quotes:
  "Why are you staring at my b**bs?," asked Corina Chee.
  "Yeah, because I pray to Jesus Christ and you pray to xxxxxxxxxx...," said Corina Chee. (xxx being a sensitive remark)

• Attended Corina's church wedding in the morning at St. Peter Anglican church.


• Afternoon drinks at Sid's... started at about 2.00pm. Had lots of pork blankets and white wine. Booze!!!
  
• Wedding dinner at a Chinese restaurant in JayaOne, PJ... more booze!!! Some of the colleagues helped out at the registration table. I was busy doing her video.
  


• Post-wedding drinks at Sumo Sri Hartamas. Ended at about 2am, if I remember correctly.

So there you go. Btw, Nobsis stands for Nobita's sister. In case you wonder, Nobita is the lazy boy in Japanese cartoon Doraemon. And for the finale... listen to the voice recording embedded here: Nobsis - AUDIO

Are we ready to Excite?

The Excite launch (or the launch of the new Text 100 Brand Identity Guidelines) started with cranberry vodka cocktails for all and then it was down to business with everyone paying rapt attention to the videos and our new BIG and the fab super portal. The EXCITE video got lot's of people excited and we all loved the spaceman and the little aliens. Messages came across loud and clear!

FY09 was kind to Text 100 Malaysia and it was top of everyone's mind on how we will fare in FY10. With Excite we now have a focal point and a driving force - Are we ready to Excite? (the animated video with spacemen and aliens playing at the back of our minds...) Our clients, our bosses, the media, our industry, our peers and of course ourselves? And you know what, I think we are ready... we have great people, the passion and the drive to make Text 100 continue to excite and impress!

If you want to watch our video for a chuckle or view it again to relive the memories, click here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_PHiYRBf4E A BIG thank you to Lee for his fabulous video editing skills 'muah muah'!

What did we do for drinks the rest of the evening? We had the classic Mojito, Vodka Green Tea with a twist and lots of other impromptu concoctions. But the one that got us coming back for a second sip was the Valkyrie!

Tthe award for Yummiest cocktail of the night went to Vicky with her Valkyrie. A wonderful little cocktail from our resident mama hen. How to make the Valkyrie according to Vicky:
Ingredients: 2 shots of Vodka, 1 shot of Lemon juice, 1 shot of Vanilla sugar syrup AND a few shots of Love...

Steps:
1. Add all the ingredients in the cocktail shaker
2. Add lots of ice, shake with gusto
3. Strain into a glass with ice
4. Garnish with a lemon slice
5. And most importantly, serve with lots of love!

It was a little hard to get people dancing but once the cocktails started flowing, we soon had Texties strutting their moves. “I’m shy lah..” Eevon says but the next minute she showing her moves. “I want to dance, I want to dance...”, and boy can Anoushka dance! And then the infamous pink feather boa came out of the store room.... Inhibitions, what’s that I say? So after much contemplation, the winner of the best dance moves in Malaysia goes to.... Anoushka! Followed very closely by Lee, our lovely Diva :-)

I must say that everyone looked great that night. David in his pink shirt, all the ladies in their finery and killer shoes. Everyone made and effort and the pictures did us all justice :-) Lot's of make-up bags on the table and people primping in the toilets but I must say that Libby stood out (her dress was hot off the rack and still had the tag on it!). In her striking blue cocktail dress, Libby surprised us all when she came out of the ladies in all her finery. Top marks for effort, a beautiful ensemble and the attitude to match!

To borrow a phrase from Min: I LOVE you guys!

We're growing!!

Text 100 will soon be three years old. Exciting times ahead!

All 14 of us at Text 100 Malaysia have had our fair share of Text-capades, at one point or the other. We've had to wheel a shared printer on a trolley, deal with leaky air-conditioning pipes and, by no fault of ours, faxed 20 copies of the same media invite to the same media. The men have worn dresses, the women showed they were no damsels in distress.

We laugh, we cry. We fart, we share bathrooms. We work, we play. We celebrate success and pick each other up after a fall. We sing, we rock out, we have unadultered fun. We do everything together, we're a team. Most importantly, we drink, we eat. Oh lorddd do we eat! The ladies have a growing hip, the gents a widening girth.

Ahh...fun times indeed. All of which are testament to the good life at Text 100. And we're looking for number 15 to be a part of us. That's right, we're growing in more ways than one and we invite you to grow with us! Err...not sideways, but in your career. Physical expansion is an option. Be forewarned though...working with us isn't always JUST fun and games. There's plenty of hardwork that goes into the perfect PR consultant marinade, in which we will soak you in overnight and a little bit more.

The hours sometimes long, clients sometimes unreasonable, media sometimes cranky, work sometimes unending. People may call you nuts, you'll develop thick skin. But if you're one who appreciates rewards behind the curtains - like a full-page article in the papers, or the CEO reading every word you've written for his/her speech, or even a simple email to say 'well done, good and faithful consultant' - then you know this is for you.

We're looking for you if you've four to five years working experience in an agency environment. We want to meet you if you're an energetic individual with the curiousity of a 10 cats with nine lives and can manage a 'litter of kittens'. We would love the opportunity to speak to you if the words 'Public Relations Campaign' make your spine tingle with excitement! Oh and if you can deliver a killer riff at Guitar Hero Wii too.

If you're all those and a jar-full more, do as Queen would and call us if you wanna have a good time (at work!).

Don't stop me now
I'm having such a good time
I'm having a ball don't stop me now
If you wanna have a good time
Just give me a call

~ Queen : Don't Stop Me Now ~

Oh. Customary pictures for your viewing pleasure. We're not always like that.

Durian Night

Christmas 2007

Text 100 Malaysia Star Awards

Christmas 2008

APAC Offsite with Text 100 Big Kahunas

A time for work, a time for play

Friday night was good relief for the overworked Texties - ML graciously offered up her house for an office BBQ.

Highlights: lamb, chicken, potato salad, brownies and Sashi's sinfully rich cheesecake.

The only real casualty of the evening was the foiled trifle due to custard that refused to behave.

Apart from that, it was a night of good food, good company and late night conversations. It's a lull in the storm right now and a good time to rest, regroup and prepare for the next onslaught.

And there was plenty of occasion to laugh without needing alcohol. Sign of a good time indeed.

Baa-ack in the groove

This is Boogie - the unofficial office mascot and my mental health prop. Boogie is standing guard over the wine that will shortly be consumed...after office hours.

We're all being good little sheep and finishing off mountains of work before congregating after hours later for good old fashioned BBQ fun.

For some reason, this year drinking games are banned. Something about alcohol being very effective as an interrogation tool. Hmm...

The Text 100 band in the making?

Here's Sashi showing off his mean drum skills on Guitar Hero at the recent Nokia N97 launch.

Unlike Sashi, I sucked to the max at the guitar. BUT...that's not going to stop me from playing it at the office. Great way to work on the hand/eye coordination, folks. Or so we'll attempt to justify to ML. Shh...

The event on Friday was great though David Lian was away getting closer to God. We had Radiance and Sashi as awesome support while Vicky, Eevon, Libby, Anoushka and me were running around. Great teamwork, guys, and though the night was a hazy blur for me I do remember you guys being so on the ball and Vicky proving to be an unruffled example of utter cool. It would have been easy to be panicky but Vicky was so collected throughout despite having to head an event of such a major scale.

What I love about Text is there's never a clash of egos - it's not about one person but about the team. No room for divas. Which suits me just fine.

Reviews of the event itself have been positive and it's satisfying to get that out of the way. Not that it's the end of the work to be done. Oh, we've only just begun as Karen Carpenter once sang. Here's to more great events in future!

Work, work, work, work, work

Hello, people.

I have survived my first month at Text 100 MUAHAHA MUAHAHA MUAHAHA.

Barely.

I started off with two accounts. Then it became three. Then it became two. Then it became three.

So I now have three main accounts. Account A has an event this week. Account B has one next week. Account C has one right after that.

And all of them are big, do or die, absolutely crucial, benchmark setting events.

After they're all done, I'll probably be longing for another CEO (Chief Entertainment Officer) outing:

(Picture taken with my trusty Nokia 5800)

Though you wouldn't have thought our last CEO outing was all that exciting looking at the faces of the two blokes I report to for my current accounts:

Don't be fooled by the picture. They were just hungrily waiting for crabs, frogs and other assorted wildlife my colleagues like eating.

Such as clueless account coordinators. MUAHAHHA.

In other news, we have a new account coordinator on board. Welcome Anoushka! Don't be frightened of us wild and crazy Texties.

You should be more afraid for your stomach though because eating seems to be the Textie activity of choice.

Perhaps my next pose will likely be a saner, more sedate one about the transition I'm making from being a journalist to a PR practitioner.

We can always dream, can't we?