You looked cute the other day

There's been an outbreak of smooth-talking at 43c Beach Road: Jianggan (pictured right), our hitherto shy retiring linguistic polymath, has started abusing his position of journalistic power by flirting outrageously with any PR girl to cross his path ... and I quote:

"Thanks Audrey for the prompt reply and you looked cute the other day. Anyway I would like to know if that the list is comprehensive. I remember seeing some names of government agencies on the screen during the party. Also, I understand that Bluetooh is a consortium of promoters for this particular standard/technology; perhaps you can let me know more about how it functions and operates in Asia Pacific? Cheers, Jianggan"

I knew that Jianggan had a strange penchant for Latin languages ... but I had little suspected that beneath the inscrutable exterior beat the seductive heart of a Frenchman. Would you trust your mother with him?

To be honest, I think it's such a great line that I'm sorely tempted to include it in the shortlist of taglines for the company polo shirt we're about to produce. I've already started to include it randomly in the emails that I send out, and I think that you should too. Take a leaf out of Jianggan's book and spread the love.

Oi, SPH! Neck it, or wear it!

The journos from Alphabet traipsed over to the Old Parliament Building yesterday to help our friends at Hill & Knowlton celebrate the PR company's 80th birthday. I have increasingly less and less time to go to these kind of things, but a last minute email from Raoul Le Blond persuaded me that my specialist skills might be needed for the party's sculling competition.

Sculling is a venerable and honourable test of mental endurance, fleet footedness, teamwork and strategic thinking - and something which my alma mater used to take quite seriously. Basically it entails sinking beers in quick succession so that your team empties their glasses before your opponents.

The last time I sculled competitively was in 1993, but I remember being on the winning side at that Pan-Oxford Sculling Championship, and had high hopes for yesterday's test of skill. Sadly I reckoned without having to accommodate lesser talents within our team. Alphabet's Jianggan and I were forced to partner with a lightweight from SPH, who seemed to think that he was at a winetasting function.

This confirms my many suspicions that the prospects for mainstream print media are bleak, and that the future belongs to niche, trade media. You can read my earlier musings on this subject here.

Anyway ... it was a good evening otherwise, and I am now inspired to pressgang an Alphabet Media sculling team to challenge any bunch of media or PR types brave enough to cross swords with Jianggan, myself and the rest of us here at Evershine & Century Complex.

Marathon man

Neither I nor Gerald Wang, Senior Journalist extraordinaire, could believe it at first ... but yesterday turned out to be his first year anniversary with Alphabet Media. God knows I tried to shake him off with a sequence of late night editorial sessions, random screaming from the rear of the office, and hours of interview transcription - but the fool seems to like it here.

This kind of aberrant behaviour is all too rare in Singapore, and is precisely why he fits in so well with the bunch of eccentrics who have come to collectively define the 'Alphabet Way'. Yes, we at 43c Beach Road like aberrant behaviour very much.

Very much. But more about that another time...

Anyway, we decided to celebrate his anniversary at Fat Frog, near where the old National Library used to be. Except that Fat Frog is no more, and has instead transformed into an interesting live music venue called Timbre (complete with the world's most hapless bar staff).

Needlesss to say, several wrong orders later, and after much red plonk from down under had been sunk, I turned to Gerald, gripped him by the shoulders and asked him to tell us what his time at Alphabet had meant to him. He dug deep, searching for the right words, and coming up with words that probably summed up how most of the rest of us were feeling: "My head. Very pain lor."

That's my boy.

(Pictured survivors: Eddie, J1, Gerald, Alanna, Minky, Captain, Jianggan)