the move

finally, i’m moving back to penang.

in holiday now. extremely free? of course not. darn busy.

planning to go oz. checking up flight plans and the travelling option on nets. re-furnishing my bedroom and my reading table. also gone to do all sorts of stuff with my family.

i guess i am the last person to move out from college. reason being, i need to follow my mom to kl on my sister’s Waja last wed to send the indon maid back on the Air Asia plane. We went down to KL on tue. Hmmm..I had the chance to take a look at the new LCCT. sounds canggih eh? nothing much. looks like a market place. so crowded, so caplang, so rojak. i wasn’t expecting a grand design, but then again, Mr. Fernandes, i believe you could do better than this.

*LCCT is low cost carrier terminal

I called this pile of treasure of 5years in UM - the Everest (PC not included).

Gotta move all this and also my big pc and monitor on wed after returning from the tiring trip to LCCT. To make matter worse, it was raining heavily with loud thunder, so heavy that it looks like a battle scene from Lord of the Ring. No choice have to move all things because I ain’t going to stay overnight again. None of my stuff was soaked wet. I covered them with The Star before I moved them. Got some help from my favorite floormate, a junior named Puru.

"Every disaster is an adventure"

I felt it was purely bad luck in the beginning, but then, it somehow turn out to be some sort of adventure, going through the drizzling rain.

for some of my interior design creation that i could not take back to penang, i’m sharing them here.

wall art cum reminder. yes, i am an ardent phlebotomist.

my great sifu on the ceiling. hopefully my room will fall into hands of another buddhist.

spoon and fork holder. don’t worry it’s safe. I lapik paper in the hole.

then here’s some photos of LCCT… oops sorry, pasar LCCT

bustling with people. sorry, didn’t have footage of people squatting around behind me.

my mom in yellow (near), her maid in blue (far away at counter)

anyway, both tue and wed is two darn tired day. each day 4hours in PLUS.

Friday was a much delightful day.

I joined the AdWave Advertising Workshop and learnt quite a lot from the expert.

One of the speaker, Mr. Gaurav, actually shown us all a series of advertising clips, very successful ones. I found 1 of them not just successful, but touching as well. It was an advertising strategy to the orthodox (yes, big words!) aka kolot society ofJews.. read this No. 7

". Soaking In the Culture Some companies are taking niche marketing to a new level by playing to a specific culture.

Take Procter & Gamble, which last year relaunched its Biomat laundry detergent in Israel. In its marketing, the consumer-products company targeted Orthodox Jews, who represent about 15% of the population. It was a tough assignment, since many Orthodox Jews don’t own traditional media like television sets.

So, P&G’s ad agency devised a plan that tapped into the Orthodox Jews’ belief that they should aid those who are less fortunate. A Biomat truck equipped with giant washing machines traveled around towns. People would donate their clothing, and Biomat would wash it and distribute it to the needy.

Biomat’s share in the Orthodox sector has grown by almost 50% since the activity began, says Jim Stengel, P&G’s global chief marketing officer."

strategy apart, it is really about helping out others. If only other companies would jump into this bandwagon, i guess lots would benefit from it. There’s still plenty of people around the world without food, without clothes.

I learnt about the brand, the brand spirit, and how our malaysian mentality is still way behind in appreciation of this brand mentality. It is not about putting the nice logo on the company, it is about living it.

After the enlightening workshop, I felt so ‘tired’ of sitting the whole day. So, i took a hike at the Youth Park.

As you can see, the jungle trekking was just a stamina-builder not a calory-cruncher (though i do realize I am getting fatter by the day), because i just could not resist the nice char bee hoon at one of it’s rest station. Best in Penang (4 stars)

the rest station

As for today, it’s the All Soul’s Day or Cheng Beng (in hokkien). In the morning, I had to go visit my grandmother (my maternal grandma still alive and kicking) and grandfathers’ grave. It was crowded over the cemetery region around tanjung tokong. Today is also the first day the new bus routes will be tested out. Suddenly it striked me that Dr. Teng perhaps could allocate the big parking lots nearby for all the cars and provide feeder bus charging RM 0.50 per person to the respective area of cemetery. The whole cemetery is a long stretch of areas along the trunk road.

my maternal granddad

my paternal grandmom and granddad

Before coming into this CC, I travelled ‘far’ to USM to attend a forum with Mr. Kenny Lee and Ms. Yasmin Ahmad (yes, that’s her in person!!) titled "Malaysian Brand in Domestic Market"

*some of her work

She made few very interesting points about brand.

According to her, the success of a brand depends on only two things

1 God’s will (first line of Rukun negara)

2 How the person on top embodied the brand

and that nothing great can be achieved by a committee.

and all brands should be in simple terms.

to illustrate simple terms, she gave away 3 Gubra posters for anyone who can answer the following questions:

what city would you think of - romantic, fashion?

what city would you think of - clean, disciplined?

what cigarette would you associate with tough, adventurous?

3 lucky winners got all the answers correct - Paris, Singapore, Malboro.

Listening more to the discussion, the reality of things, branding is a failure in Malaysia, in comparison with our neighbouring country, Singapore and Bangkok. Looking at this fact, Ms Yasmin rebuted by saying that it is a good thing as branding will only add to the cost of the item. But in my opinion, branding is very necessary for business as it can portray how the attitude (assuming it is good) of people on top (the boss) being projected onto the company and be a stiffer competition to the foreign companies.

Thinking down the line, malaysian brand may not be ahead. But looking at Malaysia as a brand. For some of us who are not familiar about our Malaysian brand, it is ‘Truly Asia’. You can see it in any advertisement about travelling to malaysia. Somehow truly asia is joke, as it simply meant rojak. Or perhaps malaysia in the world market is not successful as compare to our neighbouring countries because

1 God’s will

2 the big man on top (Pak Lah, you gotta work harder!!)

One good joke that yasmin had mentioned was people from advertising industry should be sitting and chatting around mamat, not drinking coffee at elegant Mr. Bean’s shop. (some little giggle from the crowd, majority don’t get it)

By the way, I am the one who answered ‘Paris’. I won the poster with her signature and took 1 photo with her.

I’m going to Down Under soon for 1 month. Bought the ticket d. Gotta make extensive research on option of places to visit there to keep all cost under my little budget.

the aussie language