Das Booty

I've never been one to take up issues online but a few experiences in the last month has made me froth at the mouth and have my inner "cattiness" rear up.  So lets start at the beginning

My Cha Cha Chili Sauce™

As most of you are aware I am a huge advocate of homemade products especially since it's a great way to supplement your income , hey it's does come in handy with our economic downturn.  I was added to a page by a friend which I  have mentioned in one of my past blogs,  the page is called "jobs for caring mums etc etc (it's a very long title!)  Anyway watching the members on the page grow to almost 50,000 members was astonishing but at the same time the down side was your posts for your products would get lost with the hundreds of posts on the page, a perfect example was my trying to find the organic home made soya sauce I saw on the page.  After scrolling down for more than half an hour my eyes blurred up and I still couldn't find it.

So I thought to my self (and that's a dangerous thing!) there must be a more organised way to help the homemade community.  (notice I'm not limiting it to just mothers)  Being a producer and creating shows I thought why not come up with a channel especially geared towards the homemade market and hey lets call it "HOMEMADE IN MALAYSIA"  can't go wrong there can you?

So I spoke to a film director friend of mine and said will you do this for peanuts as it's to help the community,  my friend say "yeah, it's worth while and everyone benefits", so I roped in a few more creative folk, after all it was to help the community.

My lovely faerie from OXOLOCO.COM helped design the logo

The mechanics were simple, we would shoot a 10 to 15 second video of the homemakers product with a standardised format, upload it to the YouTube Channel and the homemade producers could use the youtube links to market their product and showcase it in a professional manner.  I wasn't going to charge them the professional video fees, which lets face it,  would be out of their budgets.  I then wrote in to the Malaysian crowdfunding site  MYSTARTR.COM and applied for crowd funding for some equipment required.

What a joke, after two e mails that came two weeks apart (so in all it took them a month ) the "project coordinator"  from Mystartr still did not understand this simplistic concept and the final Kibosh was when she wrote  "what do you need the funds for ?" AFTER I had uploaded images of equipment for a DIY studio in the last e mail, so she could see WHAT THE FUNDING WAS FOR!!!! And (yes there's a wee bit more) then Mystartr sent me a generic letter to say " Your project has been idle for a month,  this project has been cancelled"  Oh the irony!!!!

To cap it off and this is where I truly believe the universe has a lot to say, the folk from the 'Page" that I was trying to help, BOOTED me off their page!! ha ha ha ha , I couldn't believe it !  Why you ask?  Because I wrote in to EcoWorld,  who  had offered the ladies of the 'page', FREE booths at their events.  I received a date and time for the booth as promised, and when I promoted my booth with my products I was accused of promoting the company ..... errrr paranoid much?

FYI

So in the end I threw my hands up and said "I give up!".  If this is the way crowdfunding sites respond to prospective applicants and how pages on FB turn into little dictatorship arenas, I'll just give it a miss thank you and sally forth with my own projects.

Finally on a Happy Note, I'm really pleased to say my friend Claire Sancelot from Zero Waste Kuala Lumpur will be launching her new shop "The Hive Bulk Foods" this weekend, and apart from fantastic organic products will be also carrying my homemade ginger and chilli sauce on her shelves!  Taa Daa!!

The Hive Bulk Foods and organic wholesale outlet

Bulging Eyes and Ringing Ears

Yeah of course the photo bomb

I've been researching a certain type of television program for the past week to see how they measure up to my latest concept,  and my eyes and ears are beginning to rebel from overexposure to media.  I'm sure if anyone saw me, all they'd think is, "huh, lucky for some, surfing shows daily."  Well believe me, most times it's not, especially if you see how much drivel is out there masquerading itself as a show.  (Now you understand why my kids try not to go to the movies with me, they usually shush me as I mutter a stream of comments under my breath ...)

So when the ladies organised a get together for Wednesday night, it was with a resounding yes that I agreed to go.  Suffice to say I've not gone out to clubs/bars/watering holes, whatever you want to call them, in quite a while so it was interesting to discover this new place called Elysium in town. Situated atop one of the business towers in town, it was relatively easy and painless to get there (yes this all really counts OK!) The lovely hostess guided me to the lift that whisked me up to the 31st floor, where the friendly waiters showed me to a lovely terrace overlooking the Kuala Lumpur Skyline.  It had just finished raining so the evening was cool and balmy.  I was introduced to everyone as there were fresh new faces there, one of the other reasons I went.

Great View

The young helpful young waiter efficiently went through a list of cocktails especially prepared for ladies night.  Unfortunately though, his accent was so thick I kept saying " sorry, could you repeat that " and leaned closer to hear him.  He sort of rolled his eyes and produced the menu for me to read for myself ... Oh you mean "urban legend" I said.  He gave me that look, you know the one, we've all done it before the "that's what I said" look.  Oooo kayy then.

biggest plate of nachos ever!

Back to the Ladies, so we have a former COO of radio broadcasting, 1 producer, 1 zero waste campaigner,  1 marketing and promotions whiz , 1 traffic news presenter and a high flyer from a major research company.  As you can imagine the conversation was eclectic and ranged from trips to the south and north pole to chasing escaping pets on a beach!  One thing we all had in common, we were all tired of the  chauvinistic behaviour still rampant in our  respective industries even though we've moved into the 21st century (I guess the burning of bras was not enough to break the glass celing!) and that feminism was more about equality, not who's better.  The conversation came to a head when we discussed how we could collectively begin to create a network of women to set up a form of "old boys club" in order to help each other move up the ladder.  I'm sure you understand exactly what I mean.  It was also refreshing to go out and have a lively and entertaining discussion, as opposed to being bored out of your mind with the company, conversation, place, time...zzzzz.

Pro back lighting yall he he he

As the night wound down,  the DJ started ramping it up, (must say really good choice of tunes from the lady jock).  We said our farewells.   A few of the girls had already agreed to meet up separately  for potential collaborations.  I'd say that was well and truly worth the night out.

And the best part?  We'll be meeting up again soon.  Right I have to get cracking, only two more days to our Scandelabra Showcase, now that Lisa is well and up and about, it's full steam ahead!  Look forward to seeing you there!  Keep those e mails coming in and thank you again for your subscription.