Spending close to $400 on clothes!! Gosh!!! But, I love every piece that I bought. I have a soft spot of jackets, coats and smart business wear. If I had all the cash in the world, I’ll probably buy all of them up. In fact, everytime I got into a shop selling these clothes, I’ll wanna try and want to buy them. Oh, and I have this crazy infatuation with skirts. I just love skirts!!! I can’t believe that I actually used to detest them when I was younger. In fact in these last 2 years, I’ve bought more skirts than I ever have in my life (exclude school uniforms and those my mum forced me to buy when I was younger for occasions like CNY). Used to be me buying jeans, and pants, but now, somehow skirts seem to rule my cupboard… LOL… Maybe it’s got something to do with school uniforms. You know how girls’ school uniforms are always with skirts. Having to wear skirts everyday probably made wearing skirts on a weekend a chore, but now that I don’t wear school uniforms I find the joy in wearing skirts.

The standard of customer service in the shops, have been amazingly good! I was surprised by the standard. People coming up to you and asking if u need help (Gosh!!! A first for Singapore’s retail shops). Although, the first few came as a shock. I tot it was only for that retail store, but turns out that it’s the current trend in a few retail stores. Amazingly, it is the bigger and better known brands who are snubbing people. Zara’s service staff was relatively helpful, but Mango's staff looked compelled to help. You can see the look from the faces of the Mango staff, although they went about the routine of serving clients, their enthusiasm was evidently missing. There was no smile, and they looked like they were doing a chore they hated. On the contrary, the smaller retail stores and even some neighbourhood store's salespeople were very helpful and friendly, giving much advice and there was no change of their attitude even when I decided not to buy what I tried on. Seems like the complaints about the level of service in Singapore has really done much to increase the standard of service in the retail stores.

FINALLY!!! It's over!!!

The presentation that we slogged so much for, going close to 3 days without proper sleep (short of a couple of cat naps that never went beyond 2 hours, we were practically living on coffee and adrenaline) and more than 2 weeks of hard work just to rush out our project. In fact, all in, I counted that in those last 72 hours, I slept at most 6 hours.

I know that God has been there watching over us, giving us the ideas, prompting us every step of the way. Why do I say so? For one, He gave me the strength to see me through those 3 days with minimal sleep (and, knowing my body system, if I don't have enough sleep, my system will start screwing up and I will start getting flu, but praise the Lord, I didn't get any flu during those few days). And, I know that we were all very jittery about our earlier ideas (we had trashed close to 4 major ideas. Each idea which took a long meeting each to settle was already well mapped out with our ad ideas, but we were still not comfortable, and we trashed. Even up till 3 days before the presentation, we were still undecided on our ideas. Can you imagine? 3 days before the presentation, when people were already in the midst of doing their creatives, we were still at the decision stafe. At Mos burger, I remember clearly that as we were discussing, I prayed and asked God to provide us with a great idea. And, let us present the best idea that 3M people would like to them. And, indeed, He answered my prayer. It was during that meeting, whilst we were supposed to talk about other things, that the idea of going by another route came up. I can only say it is God's help. In fact, I feel, if we had presented the rest of the ideas, I doubt we would have gotten 2nd, as the rest of the ideas were not in line with what 3M wanted.

Further to that, for the rest of the 4 ideas we had come up with, there was rejection from at least someone in the group, either that or after we confirmed the idea, some of us would get sceptical about it after thinking it through and call for a change of ideas. But for the last one, I feel the idea went down best with everyone. No major violent objections (maybe of the time factor, where everyone didn't want to change yet again considering how near the final presentation was), but nonetheless, it was received the best of all the ideas, although I suspect we were not very impressed with the wittiness of the creatives.

And, in that 72hours round the clock non stop work we were seeing each other every day, keeping in touch almost every hour (the wonders of technology and msn) and we learnt new skills we had never learnt before. I'm very sure YX's photoshopping skills have jumped 3 fold (Poor girl, she was the only one who knew at least a little bit of photoshop, yet we're so demanding, we kept asking her to change it to suit the ideal picture we have in our minds. I feel she did a wonderful job. Hmmm... On that note, someone who try to invent some kind of printer that can transfer our utophian image from our minds onto paper and soft copy, and that would save the creative side a lot of trouble especially when trying to communicate their ideas.) YL's probably an expert with paint now. Due to our lack of photoshop skills, we only managed to solve the problem after she did it with paint. I for one went from knowing nothing about photoshop, to be able to at least play around with a little bit of photoshop basics. (The photoshop tutorials helped a great deal). Ah... Next step is to learn how to photoshop my photos and make everyone in each photo look drop dead gorgeous. LOL... No wonder they say those who know photoshop must be vain.

Ahh.. So anyway, the big day finally arrived. We were frantically trying to print up some of the ads we hadn't finished printing and doing up our props. Gosh... It was like a mad rush. So many things to do, so little time. And the silly printer was giving problem. Gee... You should have seen how worried we were, cos it was going to be our turn soon and we were still not done. So, in the end, we decided that it'll be wiser for the presenters to head up first, and us 3 girls, Yingxiang, Shirley and me finish up the props and bring in the props later. Haha... Girls rushing in heels (if not for the bulky props, I think we would have run there). How unglam? But, we made it! Thank God!! And yes, James and Yanling gave a smashing presentation. Here's one of my favourite ad series...





















By God's grace, we managed to clinch 2nd!!! Yuppers!!!

At the end of the day, these are the 3 points which really stuck with me:

1) The encouragement which we got from the 3M managers were such a great source of moral support. We also managed to talk to some of them after the competition and managed to get a lot of insights from them.

2) Knowing that the decision between the 1st and 2nd (for Command) was a very close tie -- as in my Prof's words "the decision was split and arguments for/against were flying left/right/centre" made the lose feel easier, knowing that it was a tough fight. As YL neatly summed it up "the fact that we not only won something, but we made it difficult for the winning team to win!"

3) The ties and friendships formed through this project will continue to last a long way. *wink* (rmb Christmas dinner ah...)
















The task force frm L-R: YL, Me, Shirl, Dawne, YX, James with our props. I love the waterfall (the one YX and James are holding) and the bus shelter one (the one I and Dawne are holding).
















The 4 beauties: YX, Shirl, Me and YL!!! =) Love these girls to bits!!


This entry has been powered by Command. *wink*

During a meeting today, the topic was suddenly shifted towards chio girls. And, whilst discussing which batch of Bizad girls were the most chio (apparently the standard of the girls who matriculated in 03 were so far the best. Dunno how true it is though... hmmm...) someone made following observation was made. The girls born in 1983 are sophisticated; 1984 girls are childish and 1985 girls are crazy. So girls or guys, what do u think?

2 presentations down, 2 more to go. Somehow, my presentations this semester all seem to fall on the same day, back to back. So, I have to memorize 2 scripts at a time. Terrible. But, what to do, that's the reality of life. Ahh well, it's the Deepavali and Hari Raya Puasa holidays, but sadly, I've gotta study. 3 final quizzes within this 2 weeks. =( Hopefully I'll be able to finish what I need to do and be able to chill out at Settler's cafe for a while this friday. *wink* (If any of YOU are reading this, please CHANGE the date!!! hahaha....)