I wish I could say that while waiting five hours for my interviewee (singular, mind you!) to get her make-up and photoshoot done I went around taking creative, inspired photographs on my cameraphone, but instead, all I did was steal some quick snaps with a colleague when no one had yet arrived because neither of us had ever been in a Carcosa Seri Negara hotel room before. This was hardly the grandest of their suites but it still costs over RM1000 a night.

The living room from two angles. Those doors open out to a humongous balcony, which I forgot to take a photo of - I sure had ample opportunity.

The bedroom.

The bathroom. The door on the right leads to the toilet, bathtub and shower. The taps are gold-plated.

Okay, this one I took sometime between the third and the fourth hour because the flowers were in the lobby, just standing around looking pretty - much like I was doing. Unfortunately I/my cameraphone focused on the wrong buds.And what of the other five hours, you ask? Well, I had a couple of short meetings, made every phone call on my to-do-list, set up a couple of appointments via SMS, and spent just under an hour watching Everybody Loves Raymond and The Ellen DeGeneres Show with my interviewee’s mother - besides doing a lot of standing around, obviously. From now on, I shall consider bringing my laptop along for assignments.

I’m sleepy and restless. Feel a little bit like eating ice-cream but then the air-conditioning in the office is too cold and besides, I’m all sweetened out. We’ve been having an endless supply of mooncakes and chocolates in here. Compared to some of these guys, my sweet tooth is nothing.

The pic was taken while we were waiting to go for lunch one day. I don’t know what the rest were doing, but when you’ve got a group of like nine girls going out together, it takes a while to get organised.

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I am so going to regret

Posted on September 20, 2007, by soph, under Uncategorized.

staying up until 2am tonight when I have to work tomorrow.

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Make like a fan

Posted on September 19, 2007, by soph, under Celebrities, Movies Music TV.

After watching this vid G posted here, I was almost 100% willing to fork out RM300 to watch her.

Then I got the news that she isn’t coming, ironically not from the concert organisers themselves. Perhaps if they actually started answering their phone…

Jacky Cheung, on the other hand, did happen. My phone was fully charged, I went all ready to take pictures, and then we were late so we missed his opening five minutes. That was fine though, because the 46-year-old Jacky Cheung that wears shiny pants and spikes his hair up with silver glitter and shakes his booty just doesn’t quite do it for me. And then it started to rain - on us. And then the rain stopped before we got too wet and he started singing slow songs and it was absolutely fantastic!

He sounds ten times better live than on a CD, and even though I didn’t understand a word of the Cantonese songs he was singing, I at least understood just over half of the Cantonese he spoke. I must be the only person in the world to have lived the majority of my life in KL, was Chinese-educated, and still can’t speak Cantonese without raising eyebrows of amusement. On a more accomplished note, I understood his Mandarin songs and he very kindly put up lyrics to some of his songs so I could make like a fan and sing along. (If I go to Chinese concerts and sing karaoke songs often enough, I might even start reading Cantonese fluently.)

I still maintain, however, that grown men should not wave fluorescent batons and sway to ballads.

Unfortunately, despite forking out a whopping RM280 (after a discount mind you), Jacky was still all of an inch tall from where we were sitting. Which means I won’t even bother showing you fuzzy photos of his face on the projectors taken with my oh-so-sufficient 2.0 megapixel cameraphone. I’m being sarcastic, obviously. And which also means that until G posts his photos taken with his infinitely superior SLR camera, I have none from that day.

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Still busy as

Posted on September 12, 2007, by soph, under Career, Celebrities.

I have been slacking off - blogging that is. Work has been busy busy busy and it’s showing no signs of letting up. When I get home all I want to do is lounge around and watch House, or go out with the boys for my ice milk tea. I’m weaning myself off it though; it’s staining my teeth some.

I don’t even read as much anymore, which is not ideal because I’m trying to finish Life of the Beloved by Henri J. M. Nouwen. It’s a good read. I would blog, but all I have to talk about is work. Hmm, maybe I should talk about work

For starters, HELLO! magazine just went fortnightly (from monthly) so it’s double the work per month so to speak. The last interview I did was with Paula Malai Ali but that was a good several weeks ago. And yes, she is as hot in real life as she is in person.

Apparently, many women look their best at their akad nikah, which is the Malay wedding ceremony. I even know what it’s called now, because I attended my first ever Malay wedding last week in the name of media - HELLO! covered the wedding. I should have taken photos with my cameraphone, but I was too busy being the cool, aloof magazine writer trying not to look like a) I was bored; and b) I had no idea what was going on. I wasn’t bored the entire time - few first-time experiences are boring, at least for me - and the fact that I’m 25 and attending my first ever Malay wedding does say something about me. It isn’t something I should be proud of.

Anyway, another lady who will be planning her own akad nikah next year is Ning Baizura. I haven’t interviewed her, but that’s happening next week.

Also happening within the fortnight is what we hope will be a family affair - Alex Yoong and Arianna Teoh. I’ve heard so much about these two, I’m most curious to find out if all the opinions are founded. And obviously their four-year-old will be included. If they let him.

Interviews are a big part of what I do with HELLO!. I’m enjoying the new challenge of doing 3000-word interview stories, and love that I’m getting all the ‘difficult’ people because the powers that be are hoping that I’ll charm them into not a) kicking me out of the interview; b) call me a bitch and kick me out of the interview; c) being all difficult so I can’t get a half decent story out of them. Options a, b and c are entirely possible.

Then there’s hot magazine, which some of you may know I wrote for, and I still do. The stuff I do for hot is vastly different from HELLO!, but it runs on just as busy a schedule because it’s also a fortnightly. I would go on but I want to get on Facebook now so I may or may not expound on that.

On a non-work-related note, I’m going to see Jacky Cheung in concert this Friday with the boys. I promise to make sure my mobile phone is fully charged.