Month: April 2010

Catching Up Again – Nights at Railway

/ carlenetan / Leave a comment

In the busy-ness of the last couple of weeks, I found time to catch up with Shobs who was back from London 🙂  She killed two birds with a stone when both her friends got married on the same day, one of which was part 2 of Michele and Paul’s.  This is yet another delayed post, it was meant for last week but I was just too too busy to even catch a breath.

With MoreLomo in my iPhone, I happily clicked away as we brought each other up to speed on what’s happening with our lives.  We met at one of our favourite-est places for teh halia, the KTM railway station.

Nothing like killer teh halia that hits the spot 🙂  More than that, I do love this Lomo app … it isn’t quite the real thing but it’ll do.  Here’s a couple more pictures I love from that night.

I’m doing up this post while in Cannes, Shobs is back in London, Nis is in Singapore and Gen’s in KL.  With emails, facebook, twitter, blogs, we live in a world where distance really doesn’t make a difference anymore.  It is pretty cool how the 21st century is turning out.

That said, every now and then though, it’s nice that we’re all in the same spot, sipping teh halia and just being there for each other.  Nothing will ever replace the physical touch of another human being … that’s why I’m such a cuddle monster 🙂  That’s how I get my fix to keep going on, HUGS 🙂  So have you hugged someone lately?  Here’s your chance today coz I bet no matter how they feel, they’ll appreciate it 🙂

The Market Opens

/ carlenetan / Leave a comment

It’s the first day of business here in Cannes and by the time lunch came around, I’m reminded why most MIPs feel like a whirlwind and I hardly remember anything unless I had wrote it down.  Things definitely are looking up.  After a dismal performance in 2009, the crowd and mood for 2010 seems to be bustling.  The energy is generally upbeat and maybe, just maybe things are beginning to pick up.  For now, here’s a really quick update before I head off to bed.

It is much colder than I expected.  The meetings are a lot more aggressive too.  I reckon everyone’s just tired of how slow everything was moving last year.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’s not all hot air and there really will be an industry worth going back into.

Meanwhile, in between the back to back meetings, I managed to find some time to take in the view.  I was lucky enough to be waiting for Marcus and Li Ling on a street corner and remembered it isn’t everyday I get to wake up in a quaint French city 🙂  Hope you had a good Monday too!!

A Little Bit of France and a Little Bit of Switzerland

/ carlenetan / Leave a comment

It’s day 1 in Cannes.  It’s colder than I expected and I know starting tomorrow, it’ll be a mad rush till we leave.  So I was happy I managed to catch something like 9hours of sleep from the first leg of the trip, from Singapore to Frankfurt.  I didn’t even miss the fact that on Luthansa, you don’t get a private screen to watch whatever you want, when you want it.  The Luthansa flight gets into Frankfurt an hour earlier than the Singapore Airlines one, so we found a little cafe and had breakfast.  It was me, Marcus and in the small small world that we live in, my sister’s dear dear friend, Winston who is a journalist from the Business Times. So this is for my sister.

With my iPhone, I’ve downloaded a bunch of cool photography apps and recently got this phone booth one.  I’ll try to explain it but it’s faster if you see this:-

And that’s what we did for a bit over breakfast, play with the apps on my phone.  Honestly, I don’t know what my life was like before the iPhone.  Ask my husband and he’ll tell you I have S.E.R.I.O.U.S. problems.  I agree but right now, I’m much too in love with my phone to do otherwise.  I’m not quite sure what will happen when I get an iPad :p  Meanwhile, with my iPhone and friends, the 3hour lay over in Frankfurt simply zipped by.  Before I knew it I was on a plane to Nice, where I promptly fell asleep and woke up when we landed.

After we settled nicely into our apartments, we headed out for lunch and took in the beautiful weather.  At lunch I tested out yet another app, MoreLomo, which allows you to take Lomo styled pictures.

The ones on the left are the non-lomo shots.  The thing that makes me smile about these pictures are the people I work with.  They are such a hoot, always game for a good time, they believe in what they’re doing and I actually really enjoy their company.  So being in Cannes with them is really a good thing 🙂  Back to this app, I like it quite a bit but for these earlier pictures I not sure which ones I prefer.  These other shots though, I like them lomo style 🙂

So as the first day in Cannes wraps up and I’m getting ready to go to bed, I remember I have a couple of posts from last week I’ve been meaning to write about but I haven’t had the time to … so here’s another catch up post from last Sunday, about meeting my cousin’s other half, Phillip.

Of Swiss German descent, he’s a tall dude and as it works out, he’s dating the shortest of us Tan girls.  Here we’re comparing the two shortest Tan girls who incidentally are dating really tall guys … I guess that’s what they mean when opposite attracts 🙂  Not to be left out, my cousin, Gary who has been steadily gaining weight ever since he became a Dad, decides to make another comparison of his own.

With our other cousin’s boyfriend, Chris, “who is wider” is what they are trying to determine here 🙂  It takes all kinds to make a family and you can be sure mine is made up of a whole different bunch :p  No, we aren’t any different from other families and have our fair share of issues but we sure know how to laugh at ourselves and have crazy fun :p  Sometimes I wish I could get into the heads of my niece and nephew and wonder what they reckon of their Dad, Mum, Aunties and Uncles.  Our crazy antics and the nonsense we put ourselves through.

Most of the time, I just wonder how different our lives will be if they didn’t exist … would we hang out as much as we do?  Makes me wonder if my generation didn’t exist, would the my parents, my uncles and aunts keep in touch?  Who knows … I’m just glad we exist and couldn’t be more grateful for the three little munchkins that make our hanging out that much more special.  Even a simple dinner at Lau Pa Sat takes on new meaning because we’re making memories that we can one day think back about.

All this pondering in a strange bedroom while in Cannes got me thinking about the last couple of weeks and how I’ve been running around like a headless chicken.  It has been a little more than just crazy and I really need to take a step back.  Maybe a big step back … to take stock … what I want to do in life, the person I want to be and honestly ask myself, how long can I keep doing this to myself.  To be honest, I’m not quite sure … and why I’m doing it confounds me too.  The Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland said something about how it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place and if you really wanted to get somewhere, you’ve got to run at least twice as fast.

Lately you can call me Alice, everything doesn’t seem like it use to be and I’m running just to stay in the same spot, I’d run twice as fast except I don’t even know where I want to go.  For now, I’ll run through this week and maybe there will be a Mad Hatter in Cannes who will invite me to a tea party 🙂  Earl grey, anyone?

The Wedding Part 2

/ carlenetan / 1 Comment

This post is a week late.  I’m at the airport heading to Cannes, France for the annual MIPTV but what I’m really reminiscing about is part 2 of the lovely wedding that happened in Perth.

Yes, that’s the formal picture of the groom and his men with his lovely bride and her ladies in Perth from Part 1.  Exactly 2 weeks before last week, where at this very same time, I was completely knackered from Part 2 of the wedding that I never made it out of the house after what was suppose to be a nap to recharge for a fun filled Saturday night :p

The morning started in a crazy mad rush because I overslept :p  Thank goodness I had buffered for any hiccups and all the bridesmaids got to Michele’s on time 🙂  This time the theme was red, which is Michele’s favourite colour.

From left to right, that’s me, Resh, Zack, Shobs and Astrid.  While the girls were preparing for the arrival of the groom and his merry men, Zack had the lovely task for fetching them.  The plan was simple, a couple of tasks to initiate Paul into the Chinese tradition of fetching his bride.

I have to say, to our surprise, they were pretty game for what we threw at them.  From left to right, it’s Phil, Paul, the groom, then Darren and finally brother of the groom and best man, James.

They boogied to Sexy Back, answered questions correctly, was innovative in finding out our full names … all in all, pretty decent attempt of four Aussie boys.  So to Paul and his merry men, well done, we couldn’t have done it better ourselves.

With that, the boy gets his girl 🙂  He whisks her off to the Mandarin Oriental where the official Chinese tea ceremony and lunch is held.  Before I ran off, I had to have my picture taken with the main flower girl, Sophia.

Isn’t she such a little cutie?  Shobs took a gorgeous gorgeous picture of her, which I’ll put up once I get a copy.  Meanwhile, these ones will have to do.  There’s something about flower girls at a wedding that makes it complete.  I’ll never understand weddings that don’t have children involved :p

The other thing I love about weddings is that it’s a great opportunity to catch up with people you haven’t seen in a while.  For me, it was Shools!!  It feels like forever since we last spoke.

Other than the running around, the STB crew found time to catch up.  Who needs facebook when you have weddings 🙂  Ok, that’s a long enough post.  By the time, you’re done reading this I’ll probably be in Cannes already.  Till my next update from France, adieu everyone!!

誕生日おめでとう

/ carlenetan / Leave a comment

That’s Happy Birthday in Japanese.  Last Friday a really dear friend of mine joined the ranks of being mid-thirty and celebrated it Japanese style.  Starting with dinner in a manga cafe where we enjoyed Japanese curry on a rainy evening and then we moved on to a sake bar!!!

As always for me, it’s about the company so it was fun hamming it up and discussing … what?  I can’t remember.  Think it was the weird unfiltered sake that I reckon was so strong and a whiff of it was all I needed :p  The bar even had Studio Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle playing in the background … sooooo romance the ambience, right?

It looks like Jean celebrated her birthday but no no no, she’s no where near her mid thrities but I like that pic of her and me 🙂  It was actually Erv’s birthday, he’s the dude in the last picture, in the middle between Jean and Gerald.  I love that pic too … it’s such a Lost in Translation moment.

So to my dear dear friend, Ervin, it looks like this year is going to be an exciting one for you 🙂  Happy happy birthday!!  Thank you for your friendship and your constant reminder that some day we’ll both be part of an exciting animated feature.

Happy Easter

/ carlenetan / Leave a comment

It’s been quite the weekend, from Good Friday with Erv’s birthday celebration, to the part 2 of Michele’s wedding yesterday and a family get together today.

So till a proper post about each day, this will have to do 🙂 From my heart to yours, here’s to a Happy Hoppity Easter!!