Korea Trip

All of the sudden, I went to Korea and participated Taekwondo competition. I am really sorry that I from the start to the end, am not satisfied of my performance. It just feel like I am not good enough, upon completion of the competition, it had further confirm my thoughts. I am not strong enough, not flexible enough, not good enough. Depressing? Yes. Motivating? Oh hell yes.

When you are exposed to stimuli or even confined in an area where everyone else's standard is THAT high, you have no choice but to improve. I don't want to call it eustress, I rather call it self-actualization. When you are informed that there are something better out there, what you have became worthless. As long as you are willing to do something about it, then it's all okay.

It's just a little overwhelming, honestly. To see other Taekwondo player perform their Side Kick all the way 170 to 180 degrees upward. According to the all mighty Master Park, Side Kick do shows the proficiency of a particular Taekwondo player in terms of the understanding of the motion all the way to the dedication and years put into the training. If  170 degree is normal, I think I barely passed. Doing that in Malaysia? I think you will earn respect from everyone 3rd Dan and below. Heck, even a master might not be able to do it too.

That looks like a direction to go.
At least 150 degree, come on!

Event Preparation

It's been awhile since I last involved in the event preparation already.

I guess it had been a good 3 years since then. Today was the VU Freshie's Night which William is involved in the decoration. I was pretty beat up from the Taekwondo practice the day before, but was awaken by William's call at 9am. I dragged my half dead half blur body to the university. I suppose youngsters nowadays had never really involved in these activities much, thus allowing me to witness a lot of "whatever-nobody-can-see" attitude. Honestly, I am annoyed.

But what can I do? I am merely somebody who is not even belong to the committee and even the university. Just because that I studied event management does not change anything from the budget to the time management. That aside, it's quite painful and agonizing to see that even the Plan B (which I also did not quite like it) did not work well due to time constraint, which is obviously, due to the uninformed committees and slow moving work progress. I had even throw in my share of money into the material, seeing it falling apart does hurt, unfortunately.

Started 2 weeks before the event with limited manpower driving the decoration preparation, I had already foresee problems. Ah well, I guess it's the nature of event planning process. It's just that we have significantly low budget, significantly insufficient time due to insufficient manpower to drive the progress in the early stages of the event. External sponsorship not available as it was said to be saved for the next event, I was absolutely dumbfounded. I did expected more cardboard boxes, but I guess I'll just have to make do. Was suppose to make the jeans stopped in time, falling off the cardboard boxes, but we had just too little jeans and too little time.

Note to self, if were to conduct centerpiece production, opt for plywood with nails then paint it. If cost is still a major constraint and polystyrene is the only choice, start very early and bind pieces of polystyrene together with polystyrene glue or double sided tape and lots of PVA glue and allow it to dry thoroughly. Plaster require thorough drying too for maximum hardness which also indicate that we would have to start really early, 2 weeks is not reasonable. And of course, fishing lines with weights (wire gauze in this case), definitely something to be avoided after looking at the wounds all around the hands. It is possible to use multiple 5 liter oil container to add water for weights in cases of tower building and erections of graphic materials. Masking Tape works well during emergencies, remember to stock them up, lots of them.

I absolutely loved the ladder and theme item decoration, it was awesome. Hopefully I could get the picture from William and include it here, it was something really worth remembering. I am unable to stay back for the event due to Taekwondo training again, but hopefully everything is exactly how it looks like when I left the Multipurpose Hall, it's a bit late to say this, but I certainly hope the event did successfully changed peoples' perceptions towards event planning. It isn't all that easy, what you need is just time, money, manpower and lots of willpower and creative mind.

Of course, all in all, hopefully William could have a really good night sleep after this.