My program last Saturday...

I left home before 7 am on Saturday morning to head to KL. Oh OK, not KL. I was going to Mutiara Damansara.

As I approached Rawang, my phone rang. It was the general ring tone, which meant the caller’s number was not stored in my hand phone. When I answered the call, the voice at the other end didn’t sound too clear, somehow I was the one who spoke louder when by right I should have asked the caller to speak louder. It was me who couldn’t hear her well, not the other way round!

The caller was Jee, younger sister of Rose, whose story was the first of my clients’ I posted on my blog. 2 of Rose’s sisters, who became closer to her towards the final weeks of Rose’s life, eventually treated me as a family friend after Rose’s death.

Why did Jee call? I will save that story for my next posting.

For now let me just tell you why I went to Mutiara Damansara on Saturday. I was there to attend this…

It was the Unicef Malaysia Media Workshop on Children and AIDS.

Last week we received a fax from Unicef Malaysia – not to invite us to send participants for the workshop (it was meant for the media, particularly journalists/reporters), but to send a representative for a special session meant for reporters to meet with doctors and caregivers. I saw it as a good opportunity to introduce Buddies and what we do, and a good opportunity for networking as well. And so I went to represent Buddies.

Being on unfamiliar territory (Mutiara Damansara) I actually had to go 2 rounds to find Royale Bintang, the hotel where the event was held. I could find the Curve quite easily based on the map I printed out earlier, but where on earth was Royale Bintang? I had actually passed it the first round but couldn’t see the name of that hotel. I thought there’d be a different parking entrance for the hotel and the Curve! (Hello… ini orang bawak kereta plate A lah… Perak plate… so I had every excuse to be peghak ok?)

I still managed to get to the function on time. Other than myself representing Buddies, we had 2 doctors from the ID clinic of Sg Buloh Hospital and one representative from PT Foundation. The session was to enable us to network with the media and pitch stories regarding our work for children and families living with HIV.

It was a very informal session really – after a brief introduction of ourselves, it was more of a Q&A session for the reporters/journalists who attended the workshop. And then during the break, the reporters/journalists were given the opportunity to approach any one of us personally to ask more details.

It was a good session, really. I had to answer various questions from various reporters. I gave out quite a number of brochures and name cards, in exchange for their name cards – but by the time I got home and browsed through the name cards that I got, I couldn’t for the life of me match the cards to the many faces I saw during the session! But not to worry, if they do call me for follow up stories, all they have to do is introduce themselves…

There was another session after the break, and although I was invited to stay for lunch, I had already promised to meet up with someone at 12 pm – without having to drive elsewhere.

I promised to meet up with this guy…

That’s our Buddy Bear posing with my friend, Huggy Bear!

Yes, I had lunch with Kerp and Pinky (that’s Pinky’s hand in the picture – nice to have finally met you Pinky!).

No, I didn’t give the Buddy Bear to him – the handmade bears are only meant for HIV infected kids, remember? I just lent it to him to pose for a photo. (Hilang macho la bro!!!)

We lepak-ed for a while but I didn’t want to leave too late as I was anticipating heavy traffic heading north due to the long weekend.

OK, in my next posting I will tell why Jee called me in the morning. I got another call from her today with some updates, so stay tuned…