PHOTOGRAPHERS CONFIRMED!

(Sound of old typewriter in the background, Mission Impossible style ....)

Date : 4 August 2008, Monday.
Time : Late in the evening.
Venue : Dark, Musty Alley with a street light flashing overhead.

I look over my shoulder, making sure no one suspicious is lurking around. Keeping in the shadows with my trench coat collar overturned, I light up one more time (my nasty habit lar ... do not follow!). Hastily, I bang in the secret codes onto the laptop that was left for me by a complete stranger in a pre-marked garbage dump. "Hello Lloyd," the computer greeted me. "Here is your mission, should you decide to accept it..." Accept it? Aren't I already doing this? "This is your list of persons that have been confirmed by the secret board for your elimination .... As always, should you or any of your partners and sponsors be caught, the secret board will disavow any knowledge of your event. Save it to your thumb drive as this laptop will self destruct in 5 seconds ..." You asking me to blow up my personal ol' faithful notebook? Never!!! Precious ... (drool drool), my pppprreeccciiiooousss ..... (more drool)

Ok ok ... so it never happened that way ... after the confirmed list was emailed to me, I just picked up my mobile and dialed some numbers .... *rrrring, rrrring* (do mobile phones ring these days?? ahem!). Anyhow this is how most of my conversations went .....

"Alo?"
"Can I please speak to Mr. XYZ?"
"Yes? This is he"
"Mr. XYZ, This is Lloyd calling from the Heritage Station Hotel, Kuala Lumpur ..."
"Who?"
"The Heritage Station Hotel Kuala Lumpur????" (getting a little edgy there)
"Yes, what's it regarding?"
"I believe you enrolled for our community photography project for this coming Sunday with Mr. John W. Ishii??? Pre wedding photo shooting???"
"I did??? Can you tell me more about it?"

And I would have expected the 'future participants' to be 'a little more' excited about it .... I have a good mind to just cross out your names from the confirmed list! *Evil laughter with loads of sneering, leering, and hand rubbing!* Ok, now let me formally introduce our confirmed photographer listing, Couples 1, 2 & 3, please meet your photographers. Board of moderators, now you can put a face to a name. World, please meet our selected 15 photographers for our upcoming community event on 10 August 2008.

Mosaic of our Photographers.... Nice don't you think?
(Damned hard to get pics. Full 15 + 1 Japanese Anime Character!)

Erm ... its really hard to ask photographers for a self portrait, in my opinion, I did think it would be easier to ask amateur photographers for their self portrait but then again, I was wrong! Oh dear ..... I was greeted with "oOOoohs" and "aaAAhhsss" when I told them that I would require a self portrait of themselves even though I said they could be as creative as possible .... erm, it didn't quite turn out they way I expected it to be ... actually, this whole event didn't quite turn out the way I thought it would, according to my original plan! You can ask my partner in crime, Tommy (right Tommy?). We actually wanted something simpler to start with .... ha ha ha .. so much for that. Perhaps I will get itchy enough to run a poll of sorts asking "Do photographers hate taking images of themselves?". Hurm .... Food for thought ....

Anyway, on behalf of The Heritage Station Hotel Kuala Lumpur (@THSH in case you have forgotten) and our partners, congratulations to our photographers for being selected for this first community event. I am sincerely hoping that this won't be our last cause it's really tiring doing all this organizing and putting stuff together .... ha ha ha ... We will look forward to seeing you in person on 10 August 2008, BRIGHT AND EARLY!