987 Control with VeeKay
I think I have been too A.D.D-ish to sit down and recap on my wonderful experience co-hosting 987 control. Hence I have finally forced myself to sit down and write about it, before it slips off my mind.
Ever since I heard about 987 control from the commercials, and because for a period of time I’ve wished for an opportunity like that, I decided to text in to try my luck. I think it was in the last quarter of the year that I started texting in. After spending quite a bit of my texts, and failing to get a call, I decided to stop trying (talk about the ridiculous texting charges).
March 3 2008. It was just another weekday afternoon, as I sit at my computer surfing the internet. My phone rings, and as I looked at the screen, I saw an unfamiliar number. For some reason, I just had a feeling that ‘this was it’. It wasn’t the usual ‘66911…’ number, but I knew, somehow I knew.
I answered the call and indeed, it was Ros from 987FM! She had called to find out if I was still interested, and of course without hesitation I said ‘yes’. It had been awhile since I had stopped texting in for 987 control for awhile, so it was a pleasant surprise!
For the one-hour show, I was allowed to play 12 songs of my choice. Initially I thought, ‘Hmm, this is not a problem.’ The thing was that I had to email Ros my song choices by that night itself (I’d just gotten the call at about 5 or 6 in the evening). Considering that I had partially given up on this, I never made up a list of songs. When I finally sat down to select the 12 songs, I finally realized it wasn’t ‘easy peasy’. To pick 12 songs out of my collection of 700-800 songs, man that was quite the decision to make! While I had my opening and closing songs (Break Anotha and How Many Words) confirmed, I still had 10 other songs to pick. After pondering for some time, I finally came up with what I thought was my ‘perfect 12’, only to realize that 2 of them had swear words/profanities in their lyrics. I ended up having to email Ros 3 times just to finalize my playlist.
Alas, I finally had 12 songs selected for the show to be aired on Sunday. However, this was nowhere close to completion. I still had my script to write. I’d told Ros over the phone, that I would go down to the studio to record on Wednesday, March 5, but had to change to Thursday, March 6 instead. I hadn’t done proper writing in awhile, hence the lack of ideas.
March 6 2008. It was raining cats and dogs, so I decided to take a cab down to Mediacorp. There was no way I was going to take a bus and then take a long walk all the way to the reception. Also, if I took a cab in after arriving by bus, that would be a complete waste of time. I thought it cost over ten bucks to cab down to Mediacorp, but it was only about half of that. So my house is not far (but not very close either) from Mediacorp afterall. It only took about 25 minutes or so to get there. Imagine if it wasn’t raining.
So anyway, I head for the reception area to meet Ros who was rushing down from another venue. Exchanged my IC for a visitor’s pass and off we go to the radio building.We walked pass all the different studios for the various radio stations before coming to a smaller studio at the end, where the recording was done.
I’d expected to be donning some earphones and speaking into those ‘pro-looking’ mics, you know the whole dj thing. Anyway, it was one of those ‘table mics’, whatever you call them. Young was supposed to do some commercial but we were using it for the recording, so he apparently went to have a lunch break or something but came back for a brief moment just before we’d started recording. He saw my cue cards and started reading it in this really exaggerated tone, stopped and told me not to read it that way. (lol)
We get on with the recording and I think I kind of screwed up my little intro of Blake. I was nervous, but not ‘nervous till my heart was pounding or nervous till I shivered’. Just really excited about it I guess. More of a ‘I couldn’t keep my composure’ thing. Knowing me, I had to subtly throw in info about Blake every now and then - from him working with Ryan Tedder to his cameo role in Jordin’s video. I gained a little more confidence as I got along, but I think I lost it towards the end. As we leave the studio, I probably left an impression on Ros as the ‘girl who wouldn’t stop rambling about Blake’. (haha) I also mentioned how I’d spoken to her before, while she was with Power 98, but that had been quite some time ago already.
After the recording, I’d wanted to go play drum mania (virtual insanity!) at the arcade in Causeway Point. Upon arriving at the arcade, I immediately went to top up my card and headed off to the usual corner where drum mania was, only to discover they didn’t have it anymore. I ended up playing … DDR!
The night of March 8, a friend of my dad’s brought us some crabs and prawns from his fishing trip. Oh my, those were some huge prawns. My dad measured one of it and said it was almost a foot long! Just as a comparison, the head of one of those prawns is the length of a normal-sized prawn. That’s how huge it is, I’m not exaggerating! We’d given some to my uncle and aunt. Then my parents mentioned something about wanting to go over to my uncle’s for lunch and I kind of protested and insisted that we had to be home from 1 to 2 the following day because I had a surprise for them.
March 9 2008. THE DAY! While the adults are in the kitchen cooking up a storm, I sit happily at the radio waiting for 987 Control to air. My dad kept pestering me to tell him what was going on, but my lips were sealed. A surprise is a surprise! Slightly after 1, I was on air and the parents were pleasantly surprised. There’s nothing better than seeing the smiles on their faces! My mom thought she’d missed me as soon as Break Anotha started playing. I gave her a big tight hug and told her it’d be on for a whole hour. My dad had the radio turned on real loud and we had Break Anotha blasting around the house, yo! When lunch was ready, we sat around listening to the show and my parents said it didn’t sound like me. In fact, I’ve been getting comments on that! I guess the radio distorts your voice, and fortunately, it made me sound good. I’ll spare you of the mundane matters in between because this is already long enough as it is. But it was cool how we were discussing Idol even though we’ve never really sat down to watch this season together.
One [omg!scandalous] statement I loved!
"I managed to dig some dirt, Vanessa and Blake Lewis"
Ever since I heard about 987 control from the commercials, and because for a period of time I’ve wished for an opportunity like that, I decided to text in to try my luck. I think it was in the last quarter of the year that I started texting in. After spending quite a bit of my texts, and failing to get a call, I decided to stop trying (talk about the ridiculous texting charges).
March 3 2008. It was just another weekday afternoon, as I sit at my computer surfing the internet. My phone rings, and as I looked at the screen, I saw an unfamiliar number. For some reason, I just had a feeling that ‘this was it’. It wasn’t the usual ‘66911…’ number, but I knew, somehow I knew.
I answered the call and indeed, it was Ros from 987FM! She had called to find out if I was still interested, and of course without hesitation I said ‘yes’. It had been awhile since I had stopped texting in for 987 control for awhile, so it was a pleasant surprise!
For the one-hour show, I was allowed to play 12 songs of my choice. Initially I thought, ‘Hmm, this is not a problem.’ The thing was that I had to email Ros my song choices by that night itself (I’d just gotten the call at about 5 or 6 in the evening). Considering that I had partially given up on this, I never made up a list of songs. When I finally sat down to select the 12 songs, I finally realized it wasn’t ‘easy peasy’. To pick 12 songs out of my collection of 700-800 songs, man that was quite the decision to make! While I had my opening and closing songs (Break Anotha and How Many Words) confirmed, I still had 10 other songs to pick. After pondering for some time, I finally came up with what I thought was my ‘perfect 12’, only to realize that 2 of them had swear words/profanities in their lyrics. I ended up having to email Ros 3 times just to finalize my playlist.
Alas, I finally had 12 songs selected for the show to be aired on Sunday. However, this was nowhere close to completion. I still had my script to write. I’d told Ros over the phone, that I would go down to the studio to record on Wednesday, March 5, but had to change to Thursday, March 6 instead. I hadn’t done proper writing in awhile, hence the lack of ideas.
March 6 2008. It was raining cats and dogs, so I decided to take a cab down to Mediacorp. There was no way I was going to take a bus and then take a long walk all the way to the reception. Also, if I took a cab in after arriving by bus, that would be a complete waste of time. I thought it cost over ten bucks to cab down to Mediacorp, but it was only about half of that. So my house is not far (but not very close either) from Mediacorp afterall. It only took about 25 minutes or so to get there. Imagine if it wasn’t raining.
So anyway, I head for the reception area to meet Ros who was rushing down from another venue. Exchanged my IC for a visitor’s pass and off we go to the radio building.We walked pass all the different studios for the various radio stations before coming to a smaller studio at the end, where the recording was done.
I’d expected to be donning some earphones and speaking into those ‘pro-looking’ mics, you know the whole dj thing. Anyway, it was one of those ‘table mics’, whatever you call them. Young was supposed to do some commercial but we were using it for the recording, so he apparently went to have a lunch break or something but came back for a brief moment just before we’d started recording. He saw my cue cards and started reading it in this really exaggerated tone, stopped and told me not to read it that way. (lol)
We get on with the recording and I think I kind of screwed up my little intro of Blake. I was nervous, but not ‘nervous till my heart was pounding or nervous till I shivered’. Just really excited about it I guess. More of a ‘I couldn’t keep my composure’ thing. Knowing me, I had to subtly throw in info about Blake every now and then - from him working with Ryan Tedder to his cameo role in Jordin’s video. I gained a little more confidence as I got along, but I think I lost it towards the end. As we leave the studio, I probably left an impression on Ros as the ‘girl who wouldn’t stop rambling about Blake’. (haha) I also mentioned how I’d spoken to her before, while she was with Power 98, but that had been quite some time ago already.
After the recording, I’d wanted to go play drum mania (virtual insanity!) at the arcade in Causeway Point. Upon arriving at the arcade, I immediately went to top up my card and headed off to the usual corner where drum mania was, only to discover they didn’t have it anymore. I ended up playing … DDR!
The night of March 8, a friend of my dad’s brought us some crabs and prawns from his fishing trip. Oh my, those were some huge prawns. My dad measured one of it and said it was almost a foot long! Just as a comparison, the head of one of those prawns is the length of a normal-sized prawn. That’s how huge it is, I’m not exaggerating! We’d given some to my uncle and aunt. Then my parents mentioned something about wanting to go over to my uncle’s for lunch and I kind of protested and insisted that we had to be home from 1 to 2 the following day because I had a surprise for them.
March 9 2008. THE DAY! While the adults are in the kitchen cooking up a storm, I sit happily at the radio waiting for 987 Control to air. My dad kept pestering me to tell him what was going on, but my lips were sealed. A surprise is a surprise! Slightly after 1, I was on air and the parents were pleasantly surprised. There’s nothing better than seeing the smiles on their faces! My mom thought she’d missed me as soon as Break Anotha started playing. I gave her a big tight hug and told her it’d be on for a whole hour. My dad had the radio turned on real loud and we had Break Anotha blasting around the house, yo! When lunch was ready, we sat around listening to the show and my parents said it didn’t sound like me. In fact, I’ve been getting comments on that! I guess the radio distorts your voice, and fortunately, it made me sound good. I’ll spare you of the mundane matters in between because this is already long enough as it is. But it was cool how we were discussing Idol even though we’ve never really sat down to watch this season together.
One [omg!scandalous] statement I loved!
"I managed to dig some dirt, Vanessa and Blake Lewis"