Satisfaction

I can't get no... satis.faction... I can't get no... satis.faction.

Damn, I love that song. Something about the Rolling Stone classics that gets your head bouncing. Today's been a long day and it was quite a meaningful day.

For the past few days, I've been busy shooting Wardina's sister (Mas) wedding. Today was the wedding at noon at KLGCC. I stayed up pretty late the whole night just editing and rendering. I fell asleep while waiting for it to render. I was keeping my fingers cross this machine wouldn't suddenly pick this moment to have a blue screen of death.

I finally burned the DVD's an hour before I was supposed to be at the banquet hall. Turns out I was early after all. The only one who was there was the MC's, Inaz and Gib. It was only an hour and a half later that the wedding started. I shot interviews with friends and family members of the bride and bridegroom. It was pretty humorous listening to what they said. Their habits, what they are like, etc. Listening to them talk made me realize I don't have any childhood friends. I've been moved around so much with my family, I never actually stayed in touch with any of my childhood friends. Heck, I don't have any friends from secondary school even.

Come to think of it, besides the people I know at work, I don't have any real friends left outside of work. I need to know more people besides from work. I've been scouring friendster to see if there were anyone else I knew from primary or secondary school. Not much luck there. I guess maybe the reason why I didn't stay in touch was because I never really had a good time in school. I just kept going into the future until I reached this point when I realize that life is all about gathering experiences until death.

Anyway, everyone liked the videos at the wedding. I'm glad they did. I was worried they wouldn't like it since I had to make quite a few changes the day before the wedding. Okay, next time, I'm giving only two previews and that's it, after that no more changes!

Right after the wedding, I drove home and the first thing I did was take all my clothes of and play an hours worth of Age of Empires II. Man, that was really satisfying until I got a blue screen of death on my PC. Damn PC shut down just as my army was all ready.

After that, I had to go pick Chui Yan up to go to my grandmother's 80th birthday dinner celebration at Amcorp Mall. We thought we were late by 15 mins but turns out, everyone else was late. We sat next to my grandmother's sister and she was grumbling she was waiting really long. It was the first time I've seen all my relatives from my father's side together. My cousins all looked really different. My two cousins who are not studying in Australia are in their early 20's now but to me, they still look like little girls, which is amusing.

Chui Yan was asking me about my cousins and I honestly didn't much. I guess I find it hard to talk to relatives. Sometimes they feel like strangers, just because you have the same genes you're supposed to talk to each other. I know, this sounds absolutely mean but I sometimes find making conversation with relatives hard because I don't know what to talk about other than the food, weather and what they are doing now. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate them, I just don't know what to say.

I brought along my new video camera. I was using it the past two weeks shooting the wedding interviews. I brought it along to get some practice shooting it at a chinese banquet. Settings and shots are little different. I don't know why, but when I shoot personal events, my shots are a whole lot shittier when I do it for work. I end up panning and zooming in and zooming out of shots... something I definitely don't do for work. I haven't watched what I shot yet, I'm too embarass to download to the PC right now.

I was shooting my grandmother talking to her friends and it made me realize that there's so much more to life than just work. There are relatives, friends and other things that are important too because when you reach 80 and you look back, you want something to be proud of. Sure, you can be remembered for being damn good at your job, but you also want to be remembered for the personal relationships you have with others. Humans are social creatures. We have hopes, dreams, inspirations and aspire to great heights.

I just watched a pretty cool movie, "Life or Something Like It" with Angelina Jolie playing a ditzy female broadcast journalist. I like watching movies about broadcast journalist. Somehow, I just identify more with the movie. In the movie Angelina learns from a street prophet that she will die in one week and she starts examining her life. She ask her fiancee what is it that binds them together, do they have the same hope and inspirations. Makes me look back at myself and ask what are my hopes and inspirations. What is it that I don't tell others that I force myself to bury down so I can fit in with others.

Anyway, Angelina finally lets loose and finds that she is been rewarded for her eccentric behaviour. I think back and damn, I used to be like that too. I used to think to hell with it, this is a shitty job and I'll just say what's on my mind because I have nothing to loose. Somewhere along the line I changed. I stopped being such a bastard and be more sensitive to other people. Sometimes, I miss being that bastard... sigh. I had drive then!

So, to sum it all up, today's been about celebrating life. When to a wedding, when to a birthday dinner and watched a movie about someone changing their life. Touching.