Do I have to grow up?

The whole Jeremy Piven incident has made me nostalgic about the days when I was a teenager...

So when I was 13 - 17 years of age, I was madly in love with the local theater scene. I used to watch all kinds of plays with Hana. Hana and I went to high school together, and found each other due to our love for theater. None of our other friends cared for sitting through a 2 hour play.

There was a local production group called The Instant Cafe Theatre, and we made it a point to watch EVERY single show they put on. We fell in love with Jit Murad, Paula Malai Ali, Chae Lian, and many others.

We probably went to about 8 shows a year.. After every single theater performance, we would stay back, wait for the actors to come out so we could talk them to death, take pictures, and get yet ANOTHER autograph specific to the playbill.

Which brings me to a memory I was reminiscing about this evening:

We were 17, and there was a spare moment between the end of a play and when the actors were to come out. I looked over at Hana and said something like "Oh Hana, I want to be 17 years forever. When we grow up, how will we easily justify this silliness?" We looked at each other sadly, realising that our days of being young and acting silly with the actors were coming to an end.

Hana and I had dreams. We also made a bet that whoever made it first to the Actor's Studio gets 50 Malaysian dollars. She made it first.

I have to give major props to Hana. Due to the old folks not wanting to disrupt the status quo in Malaysia, she was asked to pursue medicine. Halfway through her course, she returned to Malaysia and pursued acting. She is now in Boston studying music at Berklee.

Let's not talk about what happened to me...

I'm going to leave you with a picture of Hana and I in our first play together. :)

Group shot with the cast!

Vegas, Friends and Sons

The company I work with was amazing enough to send 800 of us to Las Vegas for the annual kick-off event (April 15-18). I really don't care about recreations of the Eiffel tower, nor care about a large concrete hotel made to feel like you're in Italy. Nor do casinos excite me.

However, Las Vegas was an epic trip of all sorts for the following reasons:

1. People

I'm always excited to see the folks I previously worked with in US.

M, I absolutely adore, and I owe her so much for taking over Joey when I had to leave US. We keep in touch weekly, takes good care of me whenever I am in Philly, and she is the best! A, is the sweetest and one of the most genuine persons around. He is my go to person whenever I'm having a roller coaster day and has helped so much when I had to leave suddenly and was at a loss with what to do with the apartment and mail. Haha, really, thanks A! And there are so many others, the ones who had started when I did, who have now transitioned into new roles, my virtual EU team, the petal teams I worked with in London, the Rik&Maarten Dutch team I had recently gotten to know, my newly found tech team, and the ones I keep an eye out purely out of personal interest,...e.g. the Kuala Lumpur office!

The company event went on for 4 days. There wasn't a moment where we did nothing. It was either, presentations, workshops, trying to catch up as much as possible, meeting new colleagues, and trying to get 4 hours (which is a very decent amount) of sleep each night.

2. Mumford & Sons, and Jeremy Piven (major credit goes to Sara Davar for this)

The night before we were due to fly out to Vegas, I hear from SD that she had the pleasure of sitting next to Ted from M&S on her flight from NYC to Vegas. She was frantic on the phone. I went nuts. She tells me that he is the loveliest most humble person on earth,  and that they chatted for hours. We knew beforehand that they were going to perform at our hotel, but didn't secure tickets. Truthfully speaking, I at least knew about the hype surrounding the band, and did try listening to their music, but the context was never there, so I wasn't really into them. She then tells me that he's put her +2 on the guest list and that we have to go.

Come Friday, I arrived in Vegas, mingled, listened, and at around 10pm, SD grabs me and we venture off to the gig with Brandon.

The guys from M&S are musical geniuses. They are better live than on a studio recording. They soaked up the energy from the crowd, and returned the favor. I became a fan.

After the gig, we went looking for them. After explaining the situation over and over, we finally get to their private area, and Ted comes out to greet us. He invited us in to have some drinks with the band. True enough, SD's comments about Ted were spot on. He didn't even act like a celebrity. He was funny, down to earth and hospitable! I became a bigger fan.

Now, another amazing moment occurs when SD goes "Ruth, did you not see him?". I'm like "Who? Where? What?". She goes "The guy from Entourage!". She knows how much I love Entourage and I had been talking her ear off about the show earlier this year. I turn around expecting to see Adrian Grenier, but even better, it's Jeremy Piven! HooOooly. I go absolutely nuts in my insides, and really had to master everything I had not to show it. It just wasn't the place to act like a screaming fan. Unfortunately he was quite involved with the other band members. Truthfully I didn't trust myself to be calm enough to talk to him sensibly.

Vegas certainly felt like a dream. We didn't have a spare minute to stop for a moment, and think about the days that transpired, that when we returned, a lot of us thought, did Las Vegas just happen?

Dazzling Lights...

I'm off to Las Vegas tomorrow. It's almost midnight, and the excitement has just started to build up. No..I'm not excited about seeing Vegas.. I spent a few days there 4 years ago. It was fun, but I'm not too much a fan of casinos, and concrete surroundings (think Dubai). I do try out gambling when I happen to be in a casino, but then get bored after 5 minutes.

I'm excited because I get to see my American colleagues who have become friends after all these years!! We keep in touch weekly, but it's not the same as seeing their faces. The first few hours will be spent trying to find the familiar faces in a sea of 800 employees, plus the tourists around us. Ahhhhhhh...I promised a friend I'd be his gambling buddy, yea I hate gambling, but it'll be sooo fun!

I was thinking today, every time I step into the US, I go through some kind of experience for the first few minutes. For me, having lived there for 5 years, US represents so many things I admire. Tenacity, ambition, audaciousness. I may be presumptuous here having only lived in UK for 2 years, but UK and Malaysia are similar in some ways - Class, constraint, a held back attitude for fear of disrupting the status quo.

Going back to these few minutes, I honestly feel a kind of heaviness lifted off my shoulders. I soak in my surroundings, take a deep breath, and feel like I'm off to conquer the world.

Anyway...

Next time you hear from me, I might have a tattoo somewhere and a ring on my finger, and trying to dig myself out of some kind of trouble.. ;)