Changes

As you may have noticed, I have once again revamped the look. Was getting annoyed that my blog wasn't coming up as it should be on most other computers. My selected Georgia font, for some strange reason, doesn't seem to be recognised on other browsers and ended up looking like some primary school font. Anyway, have decided to go with a somewhat minimalist look. Now that I've stopped messing about with the page's look hopefully I can turn my attention to writing more despite my busy working hours.
Have been thinking of getting my own domain space for the longest time ever... but constructing a page right from scratch, and the thought of having to learn/use Movable Type just scares me. Even with supplied templates, I had to make so many adjustments before the page was properly customized. Can you imagine if I had to do everything ? I shudder to think of it and I admire those who are capable of it!

My days at BT have started picking up. Here is my very first byline at BT, published Thursday. I think after a certain number of days, the article gets archived and is no longer available online. But anyway, it was just a straight story about a local company. Not exactly the most thrilling but I thought it was a good start.

I have made a somewhat unnerving discovery today. I have realised that actually do have a sense of business acumen. I've done Math and Economics at A level but you know whenever I have discussions with my film/arty mates, we always lament the unexciting nature of economics, business, math and the like - often asserting that we don't understand bollocks about them and could never manage to survive learning all that.

Today, I actually experienced a wave of excitement looking at the stock and share prices on our newsrooms' Bloomberg computer - which provides company informantion and all the stock prices in the world. I could actually understand it! The past week has been such a learning experience... picking up all these business terms were rather difficult at the start - not even mentioning the despair I felt being posted at a business paper when I'm a bloody film major. I did resolve however not form pre-conceptions and mindsets simply because I do a very different degree... and discovered that I actually enjoy doing business news. It definitely does have its boring bits (like constantly attending press conferences of companies announcing their financial-year reports) and difficulty (what the hell is sector underweight, free float and YTD % change!) but I have to say I have immense job satisfaction banging out those stories and challenging myself. In a perverse way, doing say, a film review, would be understandably easier for me. But simply because of the degree of ease, the satisfaction derived from doing that piece of work wouldn't be as great. As compared to a work I had to work much harder for.

I found myself wondering if I should have done an economics degree instead - it was one of my choices. But the moment I thought about that, I winced. I don't think anything would make me regret doing a film degree despite general mistaken preconceptions of it being a 'soft' degree. What I've learnt on this job in one week has probably made me understand more business and economics than what most of my economics counterparts learn in the same amount of time!
And you know what? The next time some up-his-own-arse-know-it-all person starts discussing technical business, economics or finance terms with me in a patronising manner (as do most people, since they assume such concepts are alien to us film students), I will be able to, and am going to kick some ass!