The warmth of an old friend

It was just another day, works loaded my hands, worries filled up my head and serenity prayers sounding in my heart.

He showed up and touched me, let me know that he’s around. Couple hours later and he’s still there, now take the steps to get nearer to me, and talk about life, friends, works, places he’s been to, reaching for others and unconsciously build a circle around me, people with histories, people with pains, people with warm hearts, surrounding me instantly.

When he talked about his painful road he took, and I wasn’t around, he sent me lullabies in an endless trust pouring into the air between us. He confided in me, trusted me to show his scars. Let me know that scars are okay, it happens to everyone else and that somehow, we simply just have to move on.

I started to smile and laugh. I started to talk, while he sit closer and listen, and eat my snack, calmly. We are old friend, aren’t we?…

That day I never really went too far from him, just around my circle, as usual. But my mind was going all around the place, losing track of time, and I was just an alien in a proud society. Stranger, too busy to even look around.

Yet he found me. Again and again. He soothed my frantic and random minds. Made deal with my worries, simply by being there from time to time.

I don’t have to ask, and he never needed to answer. We both here.

As I whispered to him, “I don’t understand, my mind keeps wondering…”, he said, “…wondering is not always lost.”

…

 

My dearest, do you know me? Do you know me by now?

What the hell we can do about hell?

What do we know about hell, not much. But we tend to believe that we acknowledge the signs, that it’s coming soon, that its getting nearer every day, or sometimes, in my case, that we are already in hell.

Working in film production, you know you will learn to be a friend of chaos and stay positive through any kind of mess. Especially when you’re sitting in the production department. But I think, however, this kind of hell applicable to everyone else involved in the production.

As where I am working now, I feel like I’m in hell, even though it’s just the pre-production, not production days yet. What I’ve been working on so far-my previous experiences, my capabilities, by being a good crew,  is not enough to help the production to run smoothly.

The last week has been crazy, people come and go (with their own reasons) and those who stays lost interest to stay passionate about the work, too tired to deal with any sudden changes and decided to just work it out and not asking why or what, not anymore.

I thought, this should be good. And it is, in a way. My team now filled with people only care about actions, make things happens, executors. Apparently that’s not the real problems coming from.

It’s complicated, and set up to be that highly complicated already. And somehow, I think, the world, this universe don’t agree with us, with this production. Call me crazy, but things I’ve been dealing with was sent by Lucifer, and it’s not getting better every day. Like I always believe, Lucifer always good in two things: sending bills to my credit card and hell to my work.

People now got silent and smiling all the way. They may think that everyone now is okay through this hell, but for me, this is the most fragile situation, where people get silent and just go along the way. Because actually, they don’t.

Because actually, what the hell we can do about hell, anyway? It’s… hell.

We can only just hope that whatever Karma, that God or Lucifer sent to us, to this production, soon will be over and done with, before there’s not even a single soul willing to stay around.

 

Meeting is (not supposed to) kill me!

One of my favourite things about my working place in 2011 (in an animation production house) is Meeting. I mean, the management side of it: how it held, how it goes and how it end. And to be able to see my point, you have to try to sit and view from my point of view, as one of the production team.

 

what

For a meeting to be hold, first thing first we have to know what is THE AGENDA. The purpose of the meeting. And it should be clear. We won’t need a meeting just to check on spelling or information updates. It has to be on confirmation level, minimum. Usually from one department to another.

 

who

From there we will know who will be THE ATTENDEES. That is everyone who directly in connections with the agenda(s), including those will get affected by. In email terms, we can say those who is addressed To, and CCed. Sometimes we only need ‘To’ people, the rest can read the Minute Meeting later on.

 

when and where

Now we can setup THE TIME AND PLACE. In my case, because all the attendees are only 200 meters away maximum, I can easily check on them one by one and pick an available place at the time. In my experiences, time goes first, place comes end. It always easier to manage the place than the time. There goes, priority is, people will committed on time.

 

how

There’s always someone who will LEAD the meeting. He/she will need to be the mediator, or say, the host of the meeting. He/she will say ‘welcome’, makes sure the agenda(s) addressed to each attendees, take note, make conclusions at the end, and again say ‘thank you’ to end the meeting.

 

minute meeting

In my workplace, we usually have this Minute Meeting, where all the agendas and action plans decided will put down on a paper and send to the attendees by email. There’s a lot of other different names for such Minute Meeting, but the point is always the same: MEETING REPORT.

 

one with the executives

One of my executives, who is the head of several productions, used to say that a meeting will ONLY EFFECTIVE WHEN IT’S LAST FOR 15 MINUTES. 30 minutes, tops. More than that? People will loose focus and so does the meeting. And we’re just a bunch of people hanging around in the same room, busy with our own business.

 

the case

Once, we had this meeting, all the attendees are executives, those are most interesting one. Because they’re all on time, discipline with place, agendas and any rules following with it. They talks fast, so you will think if you don’t learn about the material one week before, you will get lost. Fact is, this kind of meeting usually held once for every 2 days. Worst, every 5 hours. So yeah, you may want to have a good simple notebook you will be able to bring everywhere.

The only minus thing with these executives meeting, THEY WON’T WAIT FOR ANOTHER. Everybody has to be on time, on place, sometimes, on the right manner. But you can’t plan such thing like chaos, when one has to join in a couple minutes later, this caused other attendees will have to wait to start. And most of the times, they won’t wait. Or in my experience with one of executives, he will get grumpy. I usually count until 10-usually only until 6, before I can see him walk out the door. Meanings, I have to call him back when everyone is ready.

 

the mind wonders

Sometimes I wonder my self, if they’re the executives, why are they still have to caught in other thing when it’s time to have a meeting? A scheduled one, even. Must be big-big boss, or client. Hmm, I don’t know. For me, it’s still a wonder. Once I have 9 meetings in one day/10 hours. That means, roughly, there’s a meeting in every hour. I almost get my self on the ground and almost never touch the computer. Running here and there only with my notepad and pen.

 

another case-somewhere between

My boyfriend at the time, PNJ, had a meeting one day, with a potential upcoming singer. He said there’s a new project for him to joining in. I guess, that’s the agenda. And we know the attendees, PNJ, the singer her self, maybe her manager, and a laptop to make schedule for the project. Okay. PNJ told me the meeting will be held at 9 PM. Geez, that’s real Freelance world, I guess.

Then, he informed me that everyone gathered at 10.15 PM. At 23.53, he sent me SMS, told me that he got a good offer. I guess it took them 2 hours to get into the agenda of the meeting. PNJ still have the meeting at 02.21, now, they started to work on the music, the song. Like a workshop, he said. At this moment he told me the place of the meeting, in a café. Yeah, I figured.

Songwriter comes and joining, and this caused them to have a long ‘actions decided’ part of the meeting. Roughly, more than 2 hours. Hell, they even start to work on the project! … at 2 am in the morning! Whooosshhhh…

I told PNJ, what kind of meeting held until 2 am in the morning? PNJ left the meeting place at 02.36 am. Let me know by SMS, and finally home at 03.42 am.

 

the best way to have it here

I joined a film production last year, titled Soegija. And I put the meeting form for the test, like my previous Supervisor taught me. We have a Director who actually thinks about everything else also. So when he talk, it means he talked about everything. At least about one thing, but definitely, will affect everything else. So when he talked, you (automatically) want to be there to stay alert with updates.

Unless when we run through script, shooting schedule, master breakdown or extras breakdown, we only held meeting for maximum one hour. And when the Director attended, it never last more than a half hour.

 

the secret reveals

This is my very personal secret, I’ve learned from my experiences, but I’m happy to let you know, how to detect the differences between an efficient ones and a wasted ones: the effective one will ‘give’ birth to smaller groups after the meeting closed, meanwhile the wasted one already breaks into small groups when the meeting is in progress.

So when you have a meeting with 10 attendees and there’s more than 1 people talking in the meeting-at the same time-, that’s when you know that it’s not effective. That’s when you know people should gather around in a cafe for dinner instead.

One of my friend told me, meeting people is not easy. But actually, I think, it is, as long as you know how. Stay alive and keep your self from being killed by an endless wasted meeting from now on! Have an effective ones, and save your life! 😀

And yes, let those people who comes late read the minute meeting. Everyone else can keep goes on 😉

You Are

You are an idea

That is born in a second that never exist

Yet, you’re there with my clock in your hands

 

You are a reason

From which I took steps from, and to

Yet, you’re nowhere, destination unknown

 

You are a smile

The laugh and the tears wrapped around my shaking body

Yet, you’re hiding behind the sun

 

You are a memory

A simple being to ever breed hurts

Yet, oh this path I must took to get to you

 

You are an answer

Along with thousands of doubts running on the side

Yet, you questioned me

 

You are a hope

The slight of chance I long to have

Yet, the kindness heart ended

 

You are a story

The one I will keep writing

Yet, hoping it won’t end before it begins

Perfection

This story involves two main characters, a young chef and a beautiful woman, who seems to have a perfect day, as always. The restaurant-the only setting of the movie-captures their perfect day, especially today, when these two strangers put themselves to the test of their perfect life.

 

Everyday, Daffa, the young chef, always having his perfect day. In his small restaurant, we can see the perfect from people’s smile around the corner, enjoying Sayur Asem and sharing laugh while eating. Everybody loves his cook, and can’t get enough of it.

 

The perfect woman, Sophie, enter the restaurant, so elegance. People staring at her, amazed her. It makes the perfect day more perfect. Until Sophie can’t enjoy the Sayur Asem normally. She put spices, more and more, over and over, then finally enjoy the Sayur Asem.

 

Daffa, who always watched the first reaction of after his consumer swallowing the first spoon of his Sayur Asem, shocked. Nobody ever treat his Sayur Asem like Sophie did. He suddenly feels miserable. His perfect day is over.

 

While we believe that Daffa is recovering him self from shocking, we see Sophie, sitting calmly alone with her food in the corner, look amazingly perfect, as always, and suddenly cry.