Author: Michelle Teoh

I received a text from Anne this morning saying that “Friday is dress down day at The Star” so I decided to wear jeans to work today. Esther was our OC for the day again and she said she will be sending us off with Yvonne to Midvalley on a new assignment as soon as Yvonne checks in at around noon. She was checking in later than usual today because she had to stay at Menara Star till midnight last night to finish her assignments. As usual, echoing Min Hui’s “Interns: forever waiting” slogan, we sat ourselves at the computer terminals until Yvonne arrived at around 1 PM. After lunch, we left for Midvalley at 2 PM.

Our assignment for today was to look out for the latest Christmas deco trend in malls this year. Once again, we were divided into two groups and I went with Paik Suan today while Min Hui went with Claire. What we did was observe the Christmas decorations each shop had put on, interview the shop owners and also customers on their Christmas deco theme for the year, what kind of deco has the highest sales etc. We went into Living Cabin, A Cut Above, Luggage Empire, Sony Centre and Living Quarters in Metrojaya. The only shop that had an obvious prevailing theme was Living Quarters: traditional Christmas VS modern Christmas (which would include White Christmas, Kaleidoscope Christmas etc). We spent quite some time squealing over the fabulous decorations and I even got owls!

However, an issue went down with the manager of Metrojaya but Yvonne got it sorted out quickly. After that, we left at around 4 PM to write our stories at Menara Star.

Highlight of the day: Kyle, also a Starstrucker (and an SPM candidate) had posted a status in which he was asking for dares and the dare which got a minimum of 50 likes, he would do it. During our “hanging out at the computer terminals” session in the morning, we found out that Le Shea had already posted a dare: “I dare you to make a cover of Rebecca Black’s Friday, upload it on Youtube, and at the end of the video, declare your undying love for her.” It was fantastic, since Kyle was famous for constantly serenading us Starstruckers with Friday on the Starstruck! 2011 group wall every Friday. At the time, there were only 19 likes, and, desperate to see Kyle’s rendition of Miss Black’s renowned song, we started going crazy and spread the word all over the Internet universe. By the time we left, there were 21 likes. By the time we got back, there were 48 likes. Fifteen minutes later, goal achieved: 51 likes. We had the time of our lives, laughing and screeching until I was quite sure the other surrounding journalists were already fed up with us. Sorry. But yes, we look forward to Kyle’s video soon. When we told Yvonne about this exciting turn of events, she even said it would make a good story on R.AGE. Things just rose to a whole new level.

It’s finally Friday (oh, the irony) and for once, I can say Thank God It’s Friday! Not that I had a particularly horrible week (quite the opposite) but yeah, I never get to say that back in Alor Setar so yay!

I will also be meeting up with Effie, Ellie and Mei at Midvalley tomorrow! How exciting!

I decided to wear a skirt to office today. I don’t know, random statement.

We hung out around the computer terminals at Newsdesk again today until Yvonne said four of us would be divided into two groups: one group would follow her to a press conference by Datuk Michael Chong, the other would follow another senior journalist named Wani to a Deepavali open house where we will supposedly meet the president of MIC, Dato’ G. Palanivel. We drew lots and Min Hui and I got Palanivel whereas Paik Suan and Claire got Michael Chong.

We left Menara Star with Wani in a cab at around lunchtime. To be honest, we had no idea where we were going and had assumed that it would be a political press conference. Hence, we were genuinely surprised when Wani gave directions to the cab driver to set off for the TNB Headquarters in Bangsar. It appeared that we were attending a Deepavali open house organised by TNB. The hall in which the open house was held was huge and took us by surprise the moment we stepped into it. There were about 50 tables and stalls full of marvelous Indian food outlined the hall. Despite the fact that we already had lunch at the cafeteria back at Menara Star before this, Min Hui and I couldn’t resist ourselves and went for another round, and a huge round at that. If Min Hui was around right now she’d know all the names of the dishes we had but she isn’t so let me just say that the food was heavenly. Free, good Indian food, now where else on Earth can you find that?

With our stomachs full to the brim, we were given tasks by Wani to interview several retirees who were invited to attend the function. Again, butterflies started fluttering in my stomach but as it was with the previous ambush-interviews, I put on a smile and approached this one retiree named Ismail Omar who was the ex-Deputy Chief Engineer of the company. All the retirees were extremely friendly and even quite adorable. Most of their answers to the question “How do you feel being invited to return to such events despite the fact that you’re already retired?” were “I feel happy because it’s one of the few times I get to meet my old friends and colleagues, to see how many are left every year. And I find out that the crowd actually gets smaller every year!”

The second task Wani gave us was to interview several orphans who were invited to the event, during which they were given Deepavali angpaus (Deepaus? Valipaus?). I interviewed two 13-year-olds from the At-Taqwa orphanage/kebajikan centre about how they felt coming here, what they planned to do with the money they received etc.

After we were done with the orphans, we had a brief interview with the Chief Executive Officer of TNB, Dato’ Sri Che Khalib Mohamad Noh. He was a friendly person and answered all our questions quite enthusiastically. By the time it was time to leave, I was already exhausted. Ah, the life of a journalist.

(“What happened to Palanivel?” Well, Palanivel’s mother passed away the day before so Datuk S. Subramaniam attended the event instead. We didn’t interview him though because he didn’t make a speech as we had initially expected.)

When we returned to Menara Star, I started on the report on the orphans and Min Hui did the one with the retirees and when we were done, we sent them to Wani. Paik Suan and Claire returned a little later than us and we found out that they’d gone to a real press conference (with huge cameras flashing every now and then and reporters jotting down notes at tables provided) and they had to write their reports on the event, too.

One more day until I can say “TGIF!”

The morning of day three saw me in bed with a nauseous stomach, a leftover from the previous night. I thought I was going to puke if I even got off the bed but I managed to win the battle and went to work.

Wow, “went to work”. Technically it’s not work because it’s just an internship but wow, work.

Esther was our OC at Newsdesk for the day and she gave us our first, official assignment since we stepped into Menara Star. All four of us were to follow a senior journalist, Yvonne Lim to 1Utama to interview (or rather, “ambush”, as how Yvonne had put it) several teenagers about what they were doing during the holidays. Before that, though, each of us called up a few friends of ours to interview them about their interesting holiday activities and at such a short notice, I could only randomly pick several friends and Anum, who was spending her holidays preparing for F1 Nationals, and Joey, who would be filming a short movie under her school’s Filmmaking Society in December were the unlucky (or lucky, up to you) ones.

We set off for 1Utama at around lunchtime. We headed for the cinema and bowling centre because those were the teenage hotspots and started our “ambushing” quest. To be honest, I felt like a sitting duck as soon as Yvonne said, “You can go try interview random people now” because…well, what if they ran away? What if they just stared at me and I wouldn’t know what to say at all? I didn’t even know what to say! God help me if I started stuttering and made a fool of myself. But as the others started off on their individual quests, I had no choice but to do the same. My first victim was a guy from SMJK Katholik and well, okay, at least my questions were clear and I got answers so not bad huh! My next victims were six 12-year-olds from SJK (C) Yuk Chai who came here as a sort of post-exams-cum-holiday class gathering at the bowling alley. One of the kids, a girl, was particularly enthusiastic and actually fought to be interviewed, exclaiming that, “We’re going to be in the newspaper! We’re going to be in The Star!” Amused by this, I was.

There is one thing about being a journalist (despite being an interned one) that boosts your confidence with each round of interview. One minute I was shaking in my flats, wondering what was going to happen to me if I went up to a random teenager to ask him or her about their activities during the holiday, and then the other I was getting addicted to marching up on random strangers to ask them questions. Done with every interviewee, I hunted for more (that sounded quite wrong but the metaphor is relevant). However, soon, we got the number of people we wanted and it was time to leave.

At Menara Star, we spent the remaining hour typing up short reports on our interviewees’ responses and left for home after we were done. We also managed to help Esther to decorate the mini Christmas tree at Level 5 before leaving.

My parents left KL at around 1 PM so that night, homesickness made a sudden appearance and I was left with nothing to do but sleep.

Sort-of Prelude

I arrived at PJ at around 4 PM with my parents, uncle and aunt and Soo Ling the day before on Sunday and the rest of the day consisted of visiting Eng Koko at the UM Hospital, a short visit to 1Utama and also moving in my incredibly large luggage plus five other bags (yes, mine and mine alone) into San Ku’s house where I will be staying at for the period of one month throughout the internship. By the time night fell, my heart was in my throat, I had a throbbing headache, and there was nothing but butterflies in my stomach. I sort of dreaded the arrival of the next day but time flew anyway and soon enough, it was-

Day One

Perhaps I should mention that I spent the entire morning ironing my collared blouse for three times straight. To be honest, I was very wary of the dress code and decided to opt for the safest option- a collared blouse, a pair of black slacks and black flats with buckles. I was too nervous to eat much for breakfast. Why was I nervous? I was nervous because days before the internship, Mum had bombarded me with lectures about how PR was the most important thing when you step into the working world and I’m not saying she’s wrong because she is right but the truth is I am a hopeless crackhead when it comes to communications and interactions with other human beings. Will the other interns like me? Will the officers like me? Will Anne and Jeannette (the masterminds behind Stuff@School) like me? After all, I’m just this strange kid from a tiny town someone from camp three years ago used to mistake as being in a different state thousands of kilometers away from its actual location (“Oh, Alor Setar, is that in Sarawak?“) with a different mentality from the local people here. Of course, there is always the easy solution of just being myself but apparently, just being myself means being awfully crappy at interacting with people and then my Mum’s lecture would start to resound in my head and all these would just go round and round in my head, taking away my appetite with it.

It was the first day, so Dad agreed to fetch me to Menara Star and Mum also agreed to accompany me, at least to the lobby. I reached Menara Star at around 8.45 AM which, I would later find out, was super early because Jeannette, who we were supposed to be reporting to, wasn’t even in yet. So I waited at the waiting lounge to find out Vincent was already there, reading. (The first batch of interns consisted of five people: me, Quah Paik Suan, Lee Min Hui, Claire Tan and Vincent Hoy.) It was a sort of awkward moment because the first time I saw him I had no idea who he was so I just sat down in a chair two seats away from him until a security guard came up to both of us asking what was it exactly we were here for and I found out he was here for the Starstruck! internship too and oh, it was Vincent Hoy. We introduced ourselves to each other then and soon, Paik Suan arrived and there goes another round of introductions. Claire arrived shortly after that and after the third round of introductions, Jeannette arrived and led us to Level 13, Human Resources department, where we were brought to a mini meeting room and a staff named Kayetri gave us internship forms to fill in. Min Hui arrived after that and after completing the forms, Anne Barbosa appeared to take us to Level 3A, Education department. There, we were welcomed, briefed and given cafeteria coupons. Then, we had lunch at the cafeteria at Level 2 called “Star Byte” (which is pretty ingenious, if you ask me).

After lunch, we hung around at Edu before Anne brought the four of us (me, Paik Suan, Min Hui and Claire; Vincent would be in Features for the first week) to Newsdesk to meet our OC for the day, Mr Devid Rajah. It appeared that our arrival was quite spontaneous so we did nothing except hang around the computer terminals until evening. At 5, Hoon Jie Jie picked me up and I had dinner with my parents, San Ku and Xiao Ku at Taman Tun.

Despite the fact that we practically did nothing at Menara Star but drift from department to department for the entire day, it was quite exhilarating (a word I will be using quite frequently in these internship posts, might I add) for me because it was my first time at Menara Star and the atmosphere at the various departments were pleasantly new to me. I mean, I was breathing the air in which fresh news was being transmitted at the very moment! The sound of people typing away on keyboards and polite, inquiring interviews in the form of phone calls, the smell of freshly printed newspapers and documents…it was heavenly. The people there weren’t as scary as I’d thought they would be, either, although some of them were certainly strange. Shah, an associate editor at Newsdesk, gave all four of us wise words of wisdom that began with, “Life is a sandwich.”

“First, there is the first layer, or bread, whatever you call it. That’s when you first step into this adult, working world. Everything will be different and tough at first, but when you get the hang of things, you slowly start to get better, which leads to the second layer, the meat or whatever it is you put in your sandwich. That’s when you start knowing what you’re really doing and enjoying it. Last bread layer is the part where you find out it’s already time to leave.”

Strange analogy, but great, relatable words, I have to admit.

There was also a guy in Newsdesk who introduced himself by saying, “Hi, I’m Nizam and you can call me your highness.”

When we were brought around Newsdesk, we were also frequently introduced as “the new slaves” (but in a joking manner, of course) so you can understand why I used the term ‘strange’.

All in all, it was a great day and all I hope for is a greater day tomorrow.

Have I managed to capture your attention with this High-School-Musical-related title? I used to have a HSM phase, don’t judge.

In all seriousness though, I find this title particularly appropriate for the following content, because tomorrow (technically, it’s Monday, but I think tomorrow counts as well) will be the start of something new. I will be working as an intern at The Star for a month starting from Monday.

And while this is amazing and mind-blowing, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, I can’t help but feel terrified. In fact, as of right now, the terror outweighs the excitement.

Not knowing what’s in store for me is one thing, but knowing what’s in store for me and yet feeling inadequate is another. I am horrible when it comes to communicating with other human beings, friend or not, and never having left home for more than a week has made me pampered, so you see where I’m going.

I know that this is precisely why the internship is good for me, because it’s going to make me a stronger, braver and more independent person, but I am afraid that I’m too afraid to do so, and that I won’t live up to the expectations. I have never felt this tiny before.

Despite all these confusing feelings, one thing’s for sure: whatever happens during that period of one month in KL, I will definitely come home to Alor Setar a different person, and hopefully I’ve changed for the better.

I’m sorry this post isn’t as long as I’d promised in my previous post. I’d initially wanted to pour everything out but then decided that wasn’t a wise idea.

Dear post-internship Michelle, as you reread this (I know you will, because you [or rather, we because we’re actually the same person obviously] are extreme narcissists), I hope you had a fantastic time at Menara Star and that you did not regret a single thing. I hope you learned a thing or two to make your life infinitely better than it is right now. I also hope you do not come back with a “big city mentality”, as I like to call it, because who knows what a city as huge as Kuala Lumpur is able to do to you? Remember your roots. (I am beginning to sound like a Disney movie now, aren’t I?) And if you didn’t enjoy your time there (though I hugely doubt so), remember that you have a knack of finding certain joys in life from the littlest things, so don’t mope over what’s over and start…preparing for your Form 5 life.

That horrible sentence ended quite horribly, didn’t it?

Anyway, goodbye, fair folk of Alor Setar. I will miss you and don’t worry, I’ll bring back nice gifts for you.

PS. Hopefully, I will be able to constantly update this blog about my current conditions while I’m there if I’m not too busy enough (woo intimidation!).