15 minutes and only about 20% into my lunch of wagon noodles, a man with the same thing plunked his bowl in front of me. I, in the meanwhile, was sweating from the spiciness, blowing my nose a few times, and trying at least to finish the veggies. He was done, drank all the soup in the bowl, and got up with his tray in 7 minutes flat. I gave up eventually, leaving most of the noodles untouched and doused my mouth with a cold beverage.
The one in the bottom right hand corner I just want to put up as a sign on my desk
Watoto, a children's choir from Africa. Most of these kids are orphaned by AIDs and grew up hungry for food, shelter and for love (until of course they were saved by the Watoto organization). When I plan my wedding, I think of all the lavish things that I'm supposed to do, and somehow it angers me. (Not a popular one with some people, but I got shark fin soup out of the menu. Getting rid of the banquet entirely seemed out of the question though.) I told my mom, 'do i really need to give people favours that nobody ever keeps anyway? The package will probably end up in the sea and choke a sea turtle or something'.
I've discovered that the mascaras out nowadays don't 'run' like they used to. They sort of cleanly flake off when you dab with a tissue. In the middle of my photo shoot, I had a nervous breakdown and started uncontrollably crying for 20 minutes. I was still pretty miserable after the team of make-up artists managed to fix me up again. My fiance seemed dumbfounded. He explained that people who steamroll over others in their hurry to get things done are somehow just a normal HK phenomenon, which did nothing to cheer me up, because when you're sad, you don't want an explanation; you want acknowledgement for the validity of your emotions, and give time for it to pass. However, I felt so much better after writing the below letter. I think I'll feel even better if I share it.
dear photographer-from-hell:
if you can take a moment to take out the stick up your ass and listen to what i have to say, it might do you some good. cuz there's a reason why we only chose only 20% of the photos you deemed to be the masterpieces.
1, nobody was telling you what to do. it didn't even occur to me that i had other ideas about how we should pose. i was already busy dealing with the freezing weather and painful shoes and girdle, the fake eyelashes poking into my eye, the rain, the hunger.... do you really think i was trying to be uncooperative on purpose? can you just put your stupid 'professional pride' on hold and think about your customers, whom you're supposed to be serving... and not the other way around? to stage that little 'punishment' was just low. i didn't even know it was punishment until after 10 shots and after you saying, "oh, so you're ready to listen to me again", that i realized that you made us make up our own poses out of spite. what. the. hell.
2, why don't you try communicating with your customers? and by communicating, i don't mean cryptic and confusing lines like "i need an artistic stylistic flair from you. do you understand?" or sarcastically criticize how we are not following his instructions. "it's hard for me because you're not being responsive." you insensitive SOB, i was being as responsive as i could. do you know that not every citizen does photoshoots for a living? oh, and i love this one: "can you stop looking around so that we can go on?" (gosh, even I'm not aware that i was looking around).
You know, there's a report card like thingy we have to submit back to your company? I can sort of put whatever comment I want in there, like the fact that we got the worse customer service ever? You know that, right? Now, can we go on, without you being a douchebag?"
3, stop inflicting physical pain on your subject. stop making me pose from the back, twisting my neck at some unnatural angle. making me bend at 90 degree angles isn't such a great idea either. I mean, I do yoga and pilates, but when you're wearing a girdle and a some mean shoes, some poses are impossible. in any case, it was a waste of effort. we didn't like any of those weird 90 degree angle shots. you probably thought you were being creative.
4, stop telling me to make that super wide smile. i don't look good with it and it's not even natural. i can't smile any wider. that's how my mouth is.
5. it'd be nice to ask that nice stranger's permission before you used his artwork as a backdrop for your photoshoot, while hijacking his booth and shooing him out of the way like you owned the place.
the weather is secondary to you barking at us for the entire day. Thanks for making an otherwise happy day a miserable one. your subjects are humans. if they are unhappy, they will look fake-happy while smiling, which will effectively ruin the whole picture.
from you-know-who
