i have yet to blog about this very significant event that will remain significant for quite some time. (I drafted this out a long time ago, and actually forgot about it!)

Well, i was unwilling to blog about this because i feel that it would be a very wordy post. Lacking in visual attractiveness and so perhaps making it boring. And thus undermining its significance to me. (Imagine reporting the 911 incident without any supporting photographs. How credible would that be?)


Nonetheless.




It was 3rd Dec 2007.


I'd been looking forward to that day ever since my exams ended.

It was the SPH Tea Session.




...
It was april 2003. I was fresh in jc1, looking forward to seeing my first three months gp tutor mr lawrence again. I thought he looked like my fav deejay daniel ong. To my horror, he was no longer my gp tutor. In place of him was a then-stranger, mr halim.

Never had i expected this man to have influenced me so much. He made me realize the extent of mass media's power, and how naive i had been. Because of him i joined and loved debate. And it was then i realized that my passion wasn't in the sciences, nor in the arts, but it was really in language, and the power of language as a tool of communication.

Since then, i wanted to be a journalist.
...





So back to the tea session. It was catered for graduating jc/poly students, and undergraduates who might want a scholarship from SPH.


I went to find out more about journalism, how SPH works, and in hope of meeting some real journalists.




A couple of stuff i brought home that day, besides the goodie bag.


ONE: More knowledge on how sph works, practically.

It made my adrenaline rush.
The phrase "That's exactly the kind of career i want!" ringed through my ears.

But at the same time, my hands turned cold.
"Am i ready for it?"
"Would they want me?"
"Can i live up to their expectations?"
Statements of insecurity, of inferiority, of doubt.

Then i realized.
There are SO MUCH to be done, in preparation to be a professional journalist.
Desire alone is just not enough.


TWO: Sharing by journalists.

He, particularly, impacted me a lot.
And he is Ng Tze Yong, from "The New Paper".
His passion for journalism. His initiative to do freelancing overseas. And the principles he live by. After chatting with him, I found out that he is learning or has learned Arabic as a foreign language. That is one tough language to learn! But foreign languages will always come in handy for journalists working overseas. That made me wanna brush up on my French!



War Junkies.
Ng shared with us about "war junkies". Every time a war breaks out in some part of the world, thousands of journalists book air tickets and fly there asap.

It's a rat race. Be the first to report about the war, have your pictures and your story out first, and you become famous overnight.

But the key is "connections". You have your photos, you have your story, but who do you send them to?

Most of these war junkies are actually unemployed. Precisely because they are unemployed, they resort to doing such radical things.

The sad thing is, war zones are dangerous places. Many unknown yet aspiring journalists die in their quests. No one really cares. It's a whole rat race.


The thing about being in a war zone, it pumps your adrenaline right.
You see helpless sickly bloody dying people.
You live in real-time danger.
You see hundreds, probably thousands of dead bodies lying before your eyes, and you are never the same again.

It's this adrenaline rush that makes it so difficult to return home, lie down on soft cottony beds, sip ice cappuccino and pretend that nothing has happened.

And it is this adrenaline rush that causes these war junkies to keep looking out for new war zones. Once another war breaks out, another air ticket is booked.


Ng recommended a book. Which i read and soon became an addiction. One chapter was all i could handle in a day. Any more than that i might break out in tears or enter a state of disillusion. It's entitled Dispatches from the Edge, an autobiography by Anderson Cooper, the anchor of CNN. Read it, if you dare.








That's basically what i've reaped of the sph tea session.
There are just SO MANY things I can do in preparation to be a journalist.
I don't know if i can make the mark, but it'll all show in the end.