Sunday, May 30, 2010

Cooker and TV

The past week was hectic. As some of you may know, I work as writer for dubbing projects for an independent multimedia production company in Makati (Beginnings at 20 Plus, Inc) but my department asked for our help for the infomercial shooting last Friday since the project is rush and they need manpower so that's how it started, my first ever production job not just in this company but since I started working. All of my previous jobs were office-based, where I face a computer monitor for 8-9 hours a day. While I prefer that kind of job because (anything that involves predomninatly writing and reading), but I still felt excited for doing a production work. After all I'm a Broadcast Journalism major and I had a lot of production classes before. So last Friday, I was almost awake for 24 hours. Call time was 6am and I was already there around 530 am and we finished the shoot 12 midnight. It was really a long day! But I enjoyed the experience. I was basically a production assistant, took care of production design, assisted talents,wrote idiot board, bought food, monitored the shot list and managed the shot IDs, used as "dummy" on the set for lighting purposes and all sort of things. It was really tiring and we only had one location, which was the house of the company's CEO, where we used his kitchen and living room for the shooting. Our product was a thermal cooker so shooting it was a a bit complicated. I kinda felt bad a lot of food and ingredients were wasted because they were used as props. I was really exhausted but I enjoyed the experience, it reminded me why I chose this line of work. I really made the right choice of what course to take in college. :)
I hope the client will approve the infomercial we produced.

***

On that same day, Dole Food Asia threw a very special despedida party for my father. Tatay retired as company driver after 30 years of service. As some of you may know, Tatay was hospitalized earlier this year due to hypertension and even though he already recovered, it was not advisable for him to go back to being a company driver where there are days when he has sleepless nights aside from the fact that the job is physically exhausting Tatay is not getting younger anymore and his health is a priority. It was time to move on. And Tatay successfully sent us, his four children, to school and we all now have worked. We also now have a home and our own car. All products of his hardwork. It's time for him to slow it down and relax. The night before Tatay asked me to write him a simple farewell speech for the party and I wrote what I knew what Tatay will say. The company loved Tatay so much and Nanay told me (she was also invited on the party) that a lot of his co-employees cried. Tatay is well loved and I'm so proud of him. I read the letters/messages they gave to him.They really love and respect Tatay. Tatay met a lot of employees and big bosses of Dole worldwide because of the nature of his job and lot of the people he drove from and back to the airport, restaurant, office, condominiums, houses and hotels (and even the bars) from different parts of the world paid respect to him and sent him well wishes through e-mail which was read on the party. I'm so proud of the number of people that respected Tatay. The HR even said that Tatay is the face of Dole Philippines and they love how he is hospitable and how he is always smiling when he fetches them on the airport no matter what time it is. I'm so proud of my father and I was glad to see him smiling when he was telling me how the despedida party went. I'm glad he left the company with flying colors and in high spirit. I'm so happy that Tatay received a much deserved recognition and respect from the company he worked for the last three decades. I am so proud to be his son. So proud. Thank you God for letting Tatay experience this, he deserve it so much.

(and by the way, we have a new flatscreen TV plus Home Theater set! Those were Tatay's retirement gift from Dole! The president even gave an electric toy car for my nephew!)

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