finally managed to catch Julie and Julia last night. prior to watching the movie, i heard alot of comments from other students. i heard that it makes one hungry, i heard that it was extremely boring, i heard it was great, and i heard that it inspires one to get up and try to learn cooking. frankly, i didnt not share the same thought as any of my friends though. But i did wonder about something when the movie ended, and up till now, i still have not figure out the answer, was the whole movie just trying to advertise julie child's cookbook? was it just a 2hour long advertisement trying to convince us how great the cook book was?
why would i think so? jia min asked me, if there was alot of brand names being flashed on the movie. my answer was no. but, funny thing about this movie, i wonder if other people felt it too, after watching it, i felt like buying the julie child's cookbook. i felt more interested in this cookbook, and i sincerely believed that this cookbook would make me a much better french cook then i am now. (not that i can cook very well at this point, i'm one of those servant-less cooks that has never poached an egg.)
Having this thought in my mind still when i got home, i Google-ed and Amazon-ed this cookbook.not to my surprise, this cookbook was the second best selling book in the food and beverage category.
has anyone ever realized how expensive cookbooks are? and the most fascinating is that, not all the recipes taste nice. my second brother is a chief, he explained to me that most chiefs do not really give the proper and correct instructions to make the food extremely great. they are unwilling to share their 'greatness' in that sense. i guess this is because they fear that if they do reveal all their recipes, then no one would want to pay elaborate amounts of money to eat at their restaurants, when we can all have it at the comforts at our homes and at a much cheaper cost.
according to Prof Bob's comments, and i quote ' it has been the best and worst of times'. he gave an explanation on why he thought it was the best and worst of times, but i had my own definition to that quote.
it really has been the worst and best of times. our first assignment, we got the worst results, and this time around, we emerged best. Not trying to boast, but it really feels good. so many times, too many times. we put in so much effort, only to find that our products, and the end result is not up to mark, or some would like to put it blatantly 'UGLY'.
our next assignment was up, the brochure, and truthfully, we really put in as much as or even so much more effort in that assignment in comparison with the print advertisement. so how did we fall in standard this time around? i thought about it, and decided that certain things are dependable on luck. it's sad as there are many things we cant control. like how none of our group members are good in photo shopping or any computer related programs. i am not complaining though, i agree that this is basically life. we just have to deal with it.
today, we just received our fourth assignment. television story board and radio broad cast, i cant decide if the fluttery feeling in my stomach is excitement or nervousness. thankfully, we have 2 whole weeks to complete it though. hopefully, this time around, our efforts invested in, will be able to give us more then satisfactory results.
amazingly, i just realized that i have not mentioned which country our client is. from the picture above, can you figure it out? let me give you a hint, these 5 animals made my client rather popular, thus they are called the big 5. impressive don't you think?
well, if you still cant figure it out, it's SOUTH AFRICA!
beautiful, don't you think? this country?
to be honest, when we found out that we has to do South Africa, we were kinda surprised and really excited. i believe the professor was extremely surprised at our decision to stick to this exotic country. but that is exactly it! my group members and i did not want to do on a country we already knew about, we did not want to do Japan or Korea or Malaysia, ( no offense to those doing those countries though) we felt that these countries were 'boring' in a sense that we always see advertisments on those countries all the time. 'Malaysia, truely asia', or 'Sparkling Korea', even i can memorise them already. imagine how tough it actually is for these companies to be amazingly creative doing advertisment for these countries?
now, i really am not sure if we ,made the right decision. it seems awefully tough to be able to find out more information on a country that is still developing. i know to many, it may seem that our team may not be on the best of terms, but i guess differnt groups work differnt, although we do have our differnces at times, but for most of the time, we still are very collectivistic. we do not shoot down anyone, but make subtle hints when we do not think the idea presented was such a great one. the fantastic thing about our team is that, we have the ability to work with or without the whole team being present. we believe that the work must be done regardless, so by making yourself absent, you give up the right to comment or disapprove of an idea or concept that we had already agreed on, unless of course you have an extremly good arguement to prove and convice all of us other wise. another point that i am extremely appreciative of is the fact that we dont always have to meet up to do the same piece of work. take for example, this assignment, efei, michelle and lydia will be in charge of the production work, where else weiqi and i will be concentrating on the report that we have to complete. some classmates might disagree, saying that it is an unfair dristribution of work, but think about it in a more logical matter, is it really an efficient way to complete the work? doesnt it take alot more time then it should? why must 5 poeple be present to do a job that can be acomplished by 2 people? does this make any sense at all?
