Part II.

Wein here.

We had a once-in-a-lifetime class trip to The Brunei Times in the afternoon today, Sept 7th. It was a continuation of the fun, fun day, even if, we faced some glitches in dealing with the buses. Someone mistakenly 'took' our bus and probably confused the heck out of the poor driver, since he was assigned to drive us, not them, to Gadong. Haha, I could only imagine.

We arrived at the place at 2.45, which was behind schedule. We were then ushered into this comfy-looking conference room, and there on the oval-shaped table, splattered maybe a dozen of their copies of today's papers. I don't think I'd ever touched a Brunei Times copy before, until today. Everything about it is so different from Borneo Bulletin, which is what my family subscribed to - the fonts, colours, space alignments and most importantly, the styles of writing.

BT's Chief of Editor, Haji Bujang, welcomed us with his warm greetings. Then, in a blink of an eye, the remaining space is filled with his team, all males. Intimidating much. Flashes of professional-looking cameras were fired, along with those satisfying sounds of their clicks.

Scenarios of what a BT reporter does, on a daily basis, are explained from abstracts of their personal experiences. They are, apparently, always on-call, working 24/7. These journalists have to face with events that are "totally unpredictable" and expected to be "always different". Yup, those are the quotes from a deep, manly voice of the reporter. He made English sound so sexy, my brain even froze for a second there, when I saw his mouth move to what my ears deciphered.

The tension in the room started to fade when a classmate of mine rose his hand up and shot a question. Laughter crashed in like waves, encouraging more of us to gather our courage, and ask the questions burning on our minds. It was what they wanted from us, MS-ians, to ask lots and lots of questions.

We then started to tour around the company, and were introduced to several rooms of different departments. It was really cool to have a glance at their work environment. Everything was so casual, and friendly, and strangely welcoming. I wish I could work there, write a piece then get paid for it. Well yeah, if it was that easy, I wouldn't be the first to jump in and grab the empty seat. But according to our 'tour guide', BT is lacking in photogs. Ahah, maybe that's where I come in! ;) Puuuuuui.

At 4.30pm, we were forced to end this two-hour trip - because we arrived late, our time was limited. I was in this other room, having a 'chit-chat' with this reporter - who, at that time, was typing in front of the computer screen - when my name was called. As the assistant monitor, my classmates wanted me to give the BT staff members an appreciation speech, right on the spot. I gulped, scratched my arm and looked them in the eyes. I delivered a 'speech' - though I wouldn't call it a speech - that consisted of only three broken, horrible sentences. I was frightened, because their languages are so good, you could tape it and listen to it all day. I kept thinking about how terrible I sounded, but had made a wise, wise choice to move on.

Photos credit to Mirza. :)