I have to admit to being a bit hesitant at first. First of all, it was Chinese New Year and I was in Malacca with the family. Then there was the thought at the back of my mind that I’ve gone for a few auditions and never get the part – why would this one be different?

Still, she asked if I would pair up with her because the audition requires talents to be cast in pairs and I thought, why not? I’m not a model or a commercial talent. The last time I was in a TV commercial that I remember was an Ovaltine commercial as a kid (never mind that I also appeared in an *cough* Oscar nominated film *cough* haha).

Fast forward a couple of weeks and I got a phone call from Jess, the talent agent, saying that I was short-listed and that the director would be in town to select his final choices (there was to be one lead guy, named Kim, and one lead girl who plays the girlfriend).

I got the part.

I was rather excited because I knew the job paid relatively well. If any of you wondered why I was able to suddenly, without notice, pay off my credit card in February, this was the reason.

The shoot went for three days (nights rather) at several locations in KL. All I knew about the ad was that I would be at the traffic light on a motorcycle with my girlfriend. The thing I did was freak out – I’ve never ridden a motorbike! Still, I was game to give it a try and got quick lessons from an expert at a parking lot in PJ.

I sucked.

I wasn’t confident that I could do much with the bike, let alone trust myself to carry Fatin (who got the female lead role), who you can see in the picture above of me getting made up during the shoot. Being the leads were great in that we got to wait in the comforts of an air-cond trailer. There was a lot of waiting.

Good thing I’ve done this a couple of times, and have friends who do it for a living and have shared the horror stories, so I brought books, magazines, my iPod and a pillow in anticipation of waiting.

Our call time was at 6pm most days and we’d be able to chill for a bit, have some dinner and then get dressed and get made up. By the time we’re done, it’d be about 8pm and shooting would have just started because it was a night shoot, and we needed the sun to be fully down.

Most of the time, though, I never walked onto the set until past 1am or 2am. My scenes seem to often be shot from 3am onwards before we stop at 6-something because dawn was breaking.

Another reason why I would shoot so late (and so few scenes) was because of the motorbike. The British production team (led by director Vince Squibb, who I hear is quite respectable in the industry) were very kind and kept telling me not to stress about learning to ride the bike.

That’s because I had a body double (that’s not me in the picture above, by the way)! Woot!

I get to feel like a star for a bit when I watch my body double doing all the dangerous stuff like, er, revving the bike for a close up or umm, zooming off into the distance. You know, the really scary stunts!

The times when I look like I’m moving on the commercial was, umm, when the bike was strapped down to a trailer and being pulled by a van in front of me!

But hey, anything to get the shot right?

Truth be told, I had forgotten about the ad in that there was no point waiting in anticipation because I would never know when it was aired. Until a week or so ago when I got a few comments on my Facebook wall, SMS messages and even Twitter mentions from people in the US and the UK …

“Is that you on TV?”

I really couldn’t believe it, to be honest. When I signed for a global release, I assumed they meant regional. From a marketing and advertising point of view, I couldn’t fathom why Europe or the US would air an ad featuring Asian talents.

But I’m sure they had their reasons.

So yeah, here it is, my 15 seconds (well, 30 actually) of international glory. It’s not an Oscar-nomination but hey, been there, done that!

10.23am Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

If you read my blog regularly, you might remember a post about me talking at the PopIn: PopOut Social Ideas Challenge 2 where I gave suggestion on how to deal with the snatch theft problem in our country. If you missed it, you can read it here. Anyway, just looking at my presentation slides is one thing, now PopIn has released a video of my session.

Here’s how it went:

PopIN Social Ideas Challenge – Niki Cheong from PopIN on Vimeo.

1.34pm Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

I thought I’d start with the picture above (taken by The Star photographer Glenn Guan) just in case any of you think I’m pulling your leg. But yes, yours truly won a car last night in the Blog For FT competition organised by the Ministry of Federal Territories and Urban Well-being.

The blog post that won was the only one I had submitted titled My Bangsar which I wrote in October. I had planned on submitting one a month – the contest ran over three months and required bloggers to write about anything to do with the Federal Territories of Malaysia – but I got too busy with The Swimming Instructor that I didn’t have time.

Well, I was one of the monthly winners but I never would have imagined at that time that I would eventually be the main winner in the Media Category (for members of the media who blog as well).

Well, that was the mock car key that I received from the FT Minister Datuk Raja Nong Chik. He was presented with the prize to give away by Naza Group’s Datuk SM Faisal. Datuk Rocky, who represented the judges, was cropped out of the shot (sorry!) taken by DustyHawk (as is the picture below). Love the look on my face, like, “OMG this is my Naza Kia Optima Novus!!”

Anyway, the purpose of this post really is to thank everyone who voted for me (there was a public voting element to the competition), as well as the judges and the Ministry for organising the contest.

Also, I met so many people there tonight – Friedbeef, DustyHawk, JoshuaOngYS, BadCeddy, TianChad, KevinCKW and more. Oh, and congrats to Nigel Sia for getting first runner-up in the Public Category, and Gloson for getting the same position in the Junior Category.

I know I’m trying to sound calm and selamba, but you know, I really am thrilled. Blame it on the jet-lag!

1.31am Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

The subject of the email read:

BBC intv request

Erm, hell yeah. The journalist is Jennifer Pak who had just recently moved over to Malaysia and she is BBC’s Malaysian correspondent. She was looking for someone to comment about how Malaysian politicans use new media and was referred to me as someone who would be able to comment on it.

I wasn’t 100% sure – even though it is the BBC. After all, I wasn’t a political pundit. Jennifer assured me that she was looking for someone to speak about it from a social media perspective, so I agreed.

Truth be told, I had kind of forgotten about the interview, since it has been two months since it was done. Yesterday night, however, I received an email from her telling me that it has been aired on BBC’s Digital Planet, one of the channels on BBC’s international radio station, hosted by Gareth Mitchell.

The blurb for yesterday’s episode of Digital Planet reads:

Howard Schmidt explains the importance of cyber security, and what individuals and countries can do to avoid coming under cyber attack.

Jennifer Pak reports from Malaysia about the rise of social networking amongst the countries politicians, from the prime minister down.

The BBC unveils a new competition to encourage listeners to create short documentary films.

Colin Grant reports on cMatrix12, the work of art created by Bret Battey that grew out of a computer programming error.

The radio show is divided into four parts, and I was featured in the second. Among the other people that Jennifer spoke to with regards to Malaysia’s use of social media include Malaysiakini co-founder Steven Gan and blogger-turned-MP YB Jeff Ooi. The story turned out to be a bit about freedom of speech, and about Malaysia’s government control of the media as well, but I suppose it’s all inter-related.

To listen to the whole show, click here and look for the player. I’m not able to embed the player, but to listen to the segment I’m featured in, you can click here for the permalink or click the image below.

p/s Can’t believe I speak so fast. Oer.

9.22am Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

Well, the day is today and I spent the better part of last night and this morning finishing up this Prezi presentation I did.

Unfortunately, there were only four people there to listen to me (two adults and two teenagers/youths). Oh, there were three others but they walked in during the Q&A session.

I really don’t mind small crowds – I find this better for the question and answers – but sometimes I really do wonder about the effort I put into creating my presentation and research. I know, I know, it doesn’t look a lot – and some of the things  should know at the tip of my fingers – but it all adds up.

So I thought I’d share it here with all of you, in case you’re interested.

The presentation is very basic – I created an entry-level one because I thought the audience would be a bunch of people who knew little, if anything, about social media.

I broke it down to five parts:

• What is social media?
• Social media tools.
• Who is on social media?
• Engaging social media.
• Getting on social media.

Not all the information is on the presentation though, as I usually use these as a guide. I have other material on note cards as well as, well, in my head.

I do hope that those present did take something out of it though (one of the adults tried to recruit me into the company she works for!). Like I said, I’m always happy to do these things if time permits, and I always try to create new presentations to fit each session I do. But maybe I’ll start cutting and pasting or reusing some of my presentations where I see fit.

Hope your weekend went well folks, have a great week ahead of you!

4.58pm Malaysian time (+8 GMT)