Talent100 calls me up for a full day shoot in Guang Zhou.
“Tomorrow.”
I have a Malaysian passport. It takes 3 days to get a Chinese visa. They quickly drop the idea.
Honestly, I’m relieved – a couple hours late meeting Rockstar after school and I get the Spanish Inquisition, how am I going to explain going AWOL for a whole day without enough time to prepare an alibi my son can accept?
“Where you go, Mum?”
“Mummy went looking for educational toys for you, darling.”
(Partly true – Mummy also went hiding in the warehouse to blog. The warehouse also sells toys I peruse fairly regularly for new stuff on my way up to the café.)
“Besides, you have Ms Cindy today after school. Mummy met you all 4 other days after school this week.”
(Because Mummy hangs out in kid-friendly places while you’re in school so when you come meet her you are sufficiently entertained and she has a few more precious minutes before you start trying to jump over her laptop.)
(Ms Cindy = Putonghua class. Rockstar loves her, she used to come visit and just talk to him in Putonghua when he was a baby. It was many months before her visits morphed into actual classes.)
“Mum.”
Rockstar sits next to me and gravely gazes into my eyes.
This is going to be a heart-to-heart talk.
“Why you work?”
It’s like I fumbled the most complicated string of maneuvers in the Olympics Gymnastics Finals for the Gold and when it’s all over the coach sits me down and quietly asks the most eloquent What Went Wrong?
“I. Wasn’t. Working! Mummy runs errands and remember she writes stories about you too.”
<Silence>
<Pause>
“Mum.”
“Don’t. Work. Mum.”
Like Don’t Do Drugs Mum. Don’t Run Over Stray Kittens Mum. Don’t Sell The Car To Pay For Your Gambling Habit Mum.
So no Guang Zhou story sorry 🙁 <sheepish> I quit my day job and steady paycheck to spend time with Rockstar… But… I really have experienced very little, travelled not a lot in my younger days and I did vow to experience more now… So maybe next one (if there is a next one) when I have more time to make up something to tell my Inquisitor.
And about that HKD 5,160 photo shoot Talent100 books me on so they have photos to market…..
I have a fear of makeup. Or rather, fear of people applying my makeup. I look at all the brushes and compacts and things and what comes to mind is germs, germs, germs.
This brush has touched countless other strangers’ lips.
This sponge has soaked up the oils of another person’s face.
I buy half a dozen makeup brushes and applicators while wheeling Rockstar around in the car-shaped Well Come shopping cart while he munches a tuna bun.
In a final futile attempt to convince them I don’t need much more than my 5 minute face, I also show up at the counter in a made up face, hoping my agent will say “we’re short of time, just trot her straight in to the studio”. Also the pantsuit they requested
I don’t even get past the receptionist.
“Go scrub your face,” she says, not unkindly. Her gaze flickers a second time over the 1ct studs in my ears. (Not a very good clarity (who cares?) but reasonable color. I thought they would light up my face… Is this not something I should wear to a shoot?)
So off I trot to the agency toilet.
I got the studs from a colleague. A bunch of us working gals used to all buy our diamonds from her brother-in-law – he would drop off carats and carats of loose stones with us for half a day, returning to collect them when he’d finished his errands among the jewelers in Central.
We got to play with them sparkly things in the secure dealing room, having already circulated the soft copies of the certificates beforehand, before deciding if there was anything we wanted in there. No, nothing ever went missing.
Talent100 asked me to put on a suit because they were thinking of doing more banking ads. I’m a little worried. There’s how the iPhone 4 “ad” happened in Face Magazine.
The cellphone spin didn’t bother me (who cares if I fry phones?), but now here’s the thing – I worked in 7 banks (thanks to 3 mergers) so an innocent picture in front of say, International Finance Center or Cheung Kong Building where so many banks have offices, might be a little too close for comfort.
Think gossip magazine editor unwittingly deciding to use the picture when spinning a sexy bank scandal story. The market is small. Some banker we know picks up a tabloid rag over the weekend: “H-ey… isn’t that —-?”
My previous bosses would take a hit out on me.
“We’ll pay double if you kill her slowly.”
At this stage we would be beyond whether there is any truth to any of the stories in the first place. I would have to be a lot more careful what I agree to sign up for.
I would have to take Rockstar out of school as we flee the country.
And we worked so hard to get Rockstar in school.
1) If you noticed I look more comfortable in a suit than in a t-shirt, you would be right. .
2) If you noticed I always wear the same t-shirt for photo shoots you would be right again. Virtually all the branded stuff I bought was to be worn with some work thing in mind. I didn’t get much nice casual wear til I quit.
As it turns out, the Talent100 makeup artist kindly uses a lot of my own stuff – no mean feat, considering I only own concealer, blush, an eye pencil and gloss. (My agent seems to have warned her I’m a terrible customer). She opened a pack of new sponges and applied an additional foundation from a compact, some shadow and an additional lipstick. It’s hard to believe she isn’t also a plastic surgeon or bomoh.
Makeup station at the agency. They pull back a dark curtain at the back of their office and voila – it’s all there – studio, changing room, the works.
Do they put makeup on the babies, I ask. (see pictures stuck to the mirror)
“Only the older children.”
My makeup artist has an 8-year old daughter – she doesn’t get to touch any makeup.
