Night It Up Review Meeting - Saturday July 30, 2011

I had an initial thought of just skipping this meeting because firstly it was so early on a Saturday morning, from 10am - 2pm and usually meetings like these felt boring and disappointing. It turned out pretty awesome but still had some disappointment in it as well. Disappointed because I thought there would be lunch since the meeting went past lunch time. Instead of giving us a lunch break, we weren't even allowed to leave our seats until 3pm, an hour past our planned schedule. Though my stomach felt like it would never see the sight of food again, I was able to hear many of the troubles and unexpected events that I didn't know about for Night It Up! We went through VRT, Marketing, Web, Sales, Sponsorship, Finance, Logistics teams. They all had concerns and voiced out their impressions of the NIU event and the performance of their teams. In VRT, they had a lot of problems because many of the volunteers just slacked off and didn't do their work. The volunteers, usually wearing the blue shirt, we didn't expect much from them but to just finish one simple task properly which didn't happen. It just ended up in the hands of the organizers, in the purple shirts. Seeing that I was an organizer, I experienced first-hand what it feels like to be doing all the dirty work for the event. BUT, I can finally say that I've done this work before and have some bragging rights! I laughed when the VRT director growled that he found volunteers chillin' at a nearby McDonalds while we were working our butts off.

For Marketing, based on their calculations, we had approximately 90,000-10,000 participants throughout our two day event but apparently this estimate was wrong. We had even more supposedly and the vendors who also sold their products at the T&T Waterfront Nightmarket (our rivals/competition) had complained about the poor work environment provided by T&T. One of the vendors quoted, "Even if they gave us a booth for free, I wouldn't go back" I laughed!

For Web, our whole website was run by only one person who updated and set-up our awesome website with over 63,000 views with users staying on the site for around 2 minutes. Next year, I think I'm gonna join Sales because it sounds really fun. There isn't much issues concerning Sales, except that there wasn't enough members to handle the vendors. The rest of the teams, didn't have anything in particular because they weren't important on the day of the event. Except Logistics, there was so many problems. Firstly, seeing that our Logistics director was going to retire, he said that he recommended we hire a consultant because the responsibilities cannot be fulfilled because there was too much planning involved. Poor guy, I kinda felt bad for him because he dedicated so much time for the success of this event. Apparently a whole platoon of police officers showed up and had a talk with him because they were asking why we only hired 2 paid duty officers to take care of all the traffic during the Night Market. Our director was speechless and could only mouth, "umm we didn't expect so much people to come" I laughed so hard then. Then there was the case of the robbery incident during the first night of our nightmarket and we learned a lesson, to make sure we have security when it is closing time.

Then there was the garbage disposal issues, garbage buildup was a common sight and its just a disaster to try and walk with a bag of garbage through a crowded area. Therefore we had to implement a new plan during the second day which was to put the garbage cans on the outskirts of the event so it would ease garbage picking. However it resulted in a massive garbage mountain at the stage equipment area. Juice from pineapple cores dripped into the equipment and it was a sad sight to see it but have no control as people continued to put garbage on it. I feel bad for the stage crew who were in charge of the equipment.

That's about all that I can remember from the long meeting. I really learned a lot and will definitely join NIU again next year!

Night It Up! - Saturday July 16, 2011

What an epic day. Slept at 4AM the previous night but woke up and got to work at 9AM in the morning. I'm surprised I didn't fall asleep as I was showering. Anyways the day started with the blazing hot sun shining on top of us. I remembered to put sunscreen but it was already too late since I had a red Rudolph nose. Sighh now I have to put up with ppl commenting about my nose. Night It Up Round 2, started with very little people but as the time passed, it became a hectic and crowded place of litter, people, and stinky tofu smell. I could not bear the smell of stinky tofu and would avoid it every time I passed. But there was like 3 stinky tofu booths and the always had very long line-ups. Thank god I didn't like it otherwise I would be one of them, waiting in line. The day passed by really slowly because there was a lot of work to be done behind the scenes while others were enjoying the event. I decided to enjoy the event as well since I was an 'organizer' the people who had purple shirts and just walked around looking through all the booths. That took like 5 hours because I could barely walk in the crowd. Anyways after looking through the booths, I found nothing really special except the goldfish booth where u have a piece of paper which is stuck on a circular stick and you try to catch a baby goldfish on it. Although it seems impossible, I saw tons of people catching it with such ease. At night, it was just a disaster because garbage was piling up and it was our responsibilities as Night It Up volunteers to empty the garbage and return it to the garbage receptors. For onlookers, it was an enjoyable sight as volunteers screamed as garbage juice flew on them when they were trying to take out garage. For us, it was just a painful and tough job. After that experience, I will never ever try to be a garbageman again.

At midnight, the stores had to close and there were many many discounted prices of foods and products. However the volunteers had to continue working and were not allowed to go and buy stuff. I, being the typical lazy boy, slipped out so while the purple shirted people ordered the blue shirted volunteers around. I went around looking at deals and spent around $1 on stuff that was on sale for $4-5 before. I enjoyed spicy chicken poutine, korean rice cake, 3 tapioca drinks all for a total of $5. There was ice cream for $2 but I was too late and the booth had closed before I got there. After enjoying that short shopping spree, I had to go back to work acting as if I was working the whole time. It was a long and enduring work even for a strong boy like me. I wonder how the girls were able to put up with all the work. The work consisted of putting away the tables, chairs, picking up garbage, moving the garbage, taking down baricades and cleaning up all sorts of items. It lasted until 4AM until the executive team told us to go home and come back at 9AM again.

I could not work anymore and I slept until 8PM haha. Well-rested mentally but my legs are aching still.

Its so lonely, lonely, lonely... - Thursday July 14, 2011

After watching City Hunter and during one of the scenes, the main character had to sacrifice his love to finish his destiny. Then after, this song which depicted his loneliness played and I felt sympathy and remorse for him.

Suddenly, I realized that my situation is not that far from him and I could somewhat relate to him although its a drama. Seeing others have fun while celebrating birthday parties, watching movies together and just hanging out makes me kinda jealous because I wasn't able to participate. On the other hand, I see the magic of love from couples as they

Inspiration - Thursday July 7, 2011

Suddenly, I have become a drama addict. Welllll to be exact, a korean drama addict. I'm only watching korean because chinese dramas are easy to predict their endings and japanese is just japanese. I dunno but I'm suddenly really attracted to Kdrama. On my first day of watching drama, I had watched 12 straight episodes of my current favourite drama City Hunter. But long before that, I got a little hooked on to another Kdrama, Runaway Plan B however that doesn't really count. Anyways, as I watched City Hunter, it had hit the spot and I couldn't believe I went beserk when the next episodes weren't finished. And so, I searched from blogs to begging friends about any dramas that are similar to City Hunter. I got a big fat 'NO'... I tried, Iris and Sungkyunkwan Scandal but it just couldn't compare to the thrill, excitement, adorable and action-packed drama. And now I have decided to give up on this hunt. Today I found out that the next two episodes just came out and I was just glad to use two hours to finish the next episodes. One thing I really hate about dramas are the cliff-hangers for each episode, which leaves the watcher dying for the next episode. At the same time, I really wanna congratulate them on their efforts at putting the watchers (including me) fidgeting as we desperately wait for the next episodes to come out. Anyways, I'm done with my kdrama rage.

Now back to the original topic on hand. While I was working at my workplace, I was finally able to get to know my co-workers (only 2) better. One of them was an older and retired lady who wanted a stress-free job as a secretary. During our long chat, she told us a lot of success stories which were really inspiring and touched my heart because I felt that I could accomplish the same results as those people. Anyways here goes my storytelling... just be warned that you might fall asleep.

This person who had an IQ of 164 (considered a genius since normal people have 120 generally) was a really smart kid and could predict many things. During school, he would be wearing really weird clothing and people would question his fashion sense. All of his clothes came from Asia and other areas of the world and as we all know, Canada is like 10 years behind other countries in many things including our TTC which I will not comment about that. Anyways, he would reply with: you will see in 2 years time because this will be the new style of dressing and he would always be right. He was also fluent in 5 languages, english, japanese, korean, chinese, thailand which was just amazing and soon he was able to land a good job based on his abilities and the potential that many corporations had found in him. He was sociable and had attracted the King's twin daughters in Arabia. Through his relationship with the daughters, he made many connections which became really useful during the later parts of his career. He had predicted that a golf course and hotel would be really successful in a city within Korea and needed investors to purchase the land. Through his connections from the King's daughters who were really people with a lot of money at their disposal. He was able to close off the deal with their help which became a success. My impression was like: What a LUCKY GUY... but he had the knowledge to back himself up with all that languages.

Another story was about how a korean who attended New York University (NYU). The tuition for NYU was massive with 60-70k per year. While he was in university, a really well-known korean company from Korea was recruiting people and when they saw the NYU University on his resume, they immediately hired him for the summer. During the two months, he earned 75k (enough to pay off tuition and more). His parents have made a really good investment in sending their child to NYU.

A story about the secretary herself was about how she had found a summer job as a data entry clerk like us and was working in a big company. The manager liked her work ethics because the other people who were in their 40's were always chatting and didn't work very efficiently. The manager offered her a position for the summer of her second year. After the second summer, the manager was really impressed and had given her the opportunity to become a finance manager after she graduated from her university.

After hearing all these successful and inspiring stories, I had some thoughts about myself too. I decided to work hard and try and be as successful as them!! which will be my mission!

Start of Another Week - Sunday July 3, 2011

It sure has been an eventful first week of work for me already.

First day: Late to work because I missed my bus

Second day: I fall asleep at my workplace

Third day: My bus actually breaks down so I ended up late again... (what a bummer, it wasn't my fault I guess)

Fourth day: I ask for an early leave already for some workshop

Man... my boss will not be happy with all this, but its all over and I'm pretty well-rested after this weekend. I spent like 97% of my time watching drama especially kdrama because I have a sudden urge to watch it after my friend recommended me to watch one. Now I'm hooked with City Hunter and from Thursday afternoon to Friday night, I had already watched 12 episodes of it. I was so addicted to it because its just such an amazing drama. There were so many emotional and at the end, there would always be this cliff-hanger. I could not stop myself from watching the next episode until I got to episode 12 because this drama was still ongoing and so they have not produced episode 13 yet. So, in order to fill up my drama addiction, i have been trying to find other dramas that can compare to City Hunter. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any... but one that is pretty close is IRIS which I'm watching but I'm getting bored though.